Abstract:

The Middle East region faces several environmental challenges. The negative influences of environmental issues on the health and lives of people are undeniable. Climate change, misuse of environmental resources (e.g., overuse of groundwater) and environmental interventions (e.g., dam construction without proper environmental impact assessment) are important challenges that need solutions. Furthermore, the deteriorating situation for fresh water, sanitation and waste treatment, and the effects on health and food security, are increasing the demand for international aid to the region. “Environmental Management in the Middle-East: Spatial Approaches (EMME)” is a European Commission funded project under ERASMUS+: Higher Education – International Capacity Building programme (Project No 598189-EPP-1-2018-1-SE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP). It began in October 2018 and will run until October 2021. Initiated by the Lund University and partners from the Middle East countries, the EMME project is an ambitious project aiming to match labour market needs with geospatial education offer both in Europe and Middle East countries.

The aim of this three-year project is to build capacity linked to environmental management in the Middle East. Spatial Data Infrastructures and underlying Technologies (SDI-T), including Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS), have proven to be crucial for environmental management. RS, mainly through satellite images, can be used to monitor environmental changes like land degradation and water levels. GIS can be used to model trends, identify hotspots, analyse and simulate measures to protect the environment and mitigate the effects of crisis. An SDI is required to overcome the technical and conceptual barriers in sharing heterogeneous spatial data to support collaborative decision making. Different sources of data, GIS software components, spatial DB, and analysis tools, can be combined in an SDI to provide integrated environmental modelling for the Middle East (ME).

Detailed objectives of the project are:
- Developing innovative and blended courses in SDI-T for environmental management: The developed courses will be offered by partner universities as short courses to the environmental management authorities. They will also be used as complementary courses in the master programs.
- Training of trainers: Faculty members at the partner universities will be trained on how to teach the developed courses. The ability of local teachers to teach and update these courses guaranties lifelong learning and continuation of the education and usage of the courses.
- Implementing Master degree program in Yemen and Iran: The master program will be implemented in Yemen and 3 more Iranian universities.
- Improving quality in education and teaching: Online learning techniques/tools have revolutionized the pedagogic world. ME partners will be equipped with e-learning and open network learning (ONL) tools. This makes it possible to offer standard SDI-T courses as well as the specialized courses developed in this project, online.

All courses in this project are developed based on the Bologna process. To use the courses in ME, a conversion between Bologna standards and local standards has to be carried out. For this, the courses will be offered to the ministries of higher education for accreditation.

Keywords:

Higher education, geospatial education, geoinformation system, remote sensing, environmental management, distance learning system.