Bridging ICTs and Environment - Spatial Planning and Environmental Assessment for Decision Making in Europe 2014

Human activities play a key role in shaping our landscape and environment. These activities result in unprecedented land use changes with ecological, socio-economic impacts. As the awareness about these effects is rapidly rising, we see a need to increase the link between spatial planning science and meaningful collaborative engagement with social actors. As a cross-disciplinary tool spatial planning combines research and policy making at different levels. It identifies shortcomings in nature and landscape management and shapes the way to further improvements.

The objective of course is to provide students with theoretical backgrounds and up-to date developments in term of spatial planning and landscape sustainability, with some examples from the South Caucasian and other regions of the world, taken from recently completed and ongoing research projects. It aims at facilitating the integration of researchers from EU neighbors into the European research scene on ICT and spatial planning in environmental management and decision-making. The potential cooperation paths will be presented to prospective collaborators from the target countries. A series of recently completed and ongoing research projects in the area of geospatial based decision making will be presented and discussed. The Summer School will also establish initial contacts and foster collaborative ties between young researchers from both the EU and neighboring countries to initiate and develop successful geospatial projects. 

 

Participants will have to complete a series of exercises for successful course completion.