Promoting of the geospatial skills: first results of the geoskills plus project of the Leonardo Da Vinci programme

Abstract

In order to analyse the gap and to find out the reasons and factors, which have an influence on gap occurrence, and creates the mismatch between European geospatial education community and geospatial labour market, the hierarchy of the gap structure was developed. Suggested structure was adopted for questionnaire of respondents by method of pairwise comparison and processing of obtained judgements by multi-criteria method – Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The test AHP computations were made and expected digital values of gap factors importance was determined for some European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Netherlands). Based on these results the optimal ways to Raise Awareness of geospatial studies and increase student enrolment were set up. GeoSkills Plus also identified the gaps between the supply of geospatial jobs and the demand for qualified graduates in different European countries, and set up ways to bridge the gap. Ultimately a Cooperation Model is created that identifies all stakeholders and offers them the steps necessary to improve Europe’s position in the global geospatial market.