ITC Vision 2020

UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE FACULTY OF GEO-INFORMATION SCIENCE AND EARTH OBSERVATION (ITC) VISITING ADDRESS Hengelosestraat 99 7514 AE Enschede The Netherlands POSTAL ADDRESS P.O. box 217 7500 AE, Enschede The Netherlands T: +31 (0)53 4874 444 F: +31 (0)53 4874 400 E: info-itc@utwente.nl I: www.itc.nl and www.utwente.nl/en

WWW.UTWENTE.NL/ITC

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UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE: A FUTURE DEFINED BY AMBITION, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

THE UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE IS ACCELERATING. AS A UNIVERSITY, WE ARE EMBRACING A BOLD NEW SET OF AMBITIONS AND RAISING THE BAR EVEN HIGHER. THE UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE IS THE LEADING EUROPEAN ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY. WE CONSTANTLY ANTICIPATE FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS AND RESPOND RAPIDLY AND EFFECTIVELY TO THE CHANGING WORLD AROUND US. OUR STAFF ARE EXPERTS IN THEIR FIELD AND SET THE AGENDA FOR PUBLIC DEBATE. OUR ONGOING INTERACTION WITH PUBLIC SECTOR, RESEARCH INSTITUTES AND GOVERNMENT GENERATES GROUND-BREAKING RESEARCH AND WORLD-CLASS INNOVATIONS. WE PRODUCE OUTSTANDING GRADUATES WHO EXCEL BY COMBINING EXPERTISE FROM A RANGE OF FIELDS AS THEY DESIGN SOLUTIONS THAT MEET THE GLOBAL DEMANDS OF THE FUTURE. WITH THE MERGE OF THE ITC WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE IN 2010 WE CONSIDER THE WHOLE WORLD AS OUR PLAYING FIELD FOR CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN OUR KNOWLEDGE DOMAINS.

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HIGH TECH HUMAN TOUCH FOCUS ON GLOBAL GRAND CHALLENGES WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

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The University of Twente (UT) has developed a new Vision 2020: Navigating with Precision. The aim is to become an international university. New “high tech human touch” knowledge will be developed with international partners for and within an international context, focusing on the global grand challenges.

Leading core values will be: • Societal impact: making a real difference • Synergy: excellence in combinations • Entrepreneurship and innovation • Internationalization: tomorrow’s global citizens.

The way in which the UT embodies and combines these core values is what makes it unique: focused on society, driven by synergy, entrepreneurial and international in nature.

The faculty ITC, which develops and applies spatial technology (high tech) that generates international societal impact (human touch), fully supports these new core values. ITC considers its alumni to be its most important “product”: they are our proud ambassadors and preferred partners in many projects. ITC will continue to consult and access its alumni network to achieve its mission and goals.

Given the source of our still significant base funding, we continue to link our activities to the policy agenda (A World to Gain) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This implies that ITC’s strategic activities are aimed mainly at the priority countries of the Ministry and the faculty will continue to be involved in programmes related to focal ministerial activities. We will continue to strive to become less dependent on the base funding. Our success in attracting external funding during the last few years will allow us to grow by approximately 10% in staff volume compared with 2014. We will recruit new young staff who adhere to the UT 2020 core values as well as ITC’s specific mission.

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ITC is the UT’s Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation.

Our mission is to develop capacity, particularly in less developed countries, and to utilize geospatial solutions to deal with national and global problems.

Our vision is that spatial solutions will play an increasingly important role in meeting many of mankind’s complex challenges (often wicked problems), such as climate change, population growth, and related claims for sufficient and secure food, water, energy, health, land and housing provision.

Therefore, our goal is to enhance our standing as an internationally recognized knowledge hub in the spatial domain, renowned for its collaborative educational and research activities, particularly in the global South.

FACULTY ITC GEO-ICT TECHNOLOGY IS RAPIDLY CHANGING SOCIETY EVERYWHERE

Currently, Geo-ICT technology is rapidly changing society everywhere − mobile, sensor and internet revolutions are touching Africa and Asia equally forcefully. These developments require adaptive and well-coordinated responses. Following the core values of the UT, ITC’s strategy is to expand our role as an international knowledge hub for capacity development in our fields of expertise. Societal impact will be achieved by honing our efforts to have a real impact in the global South. Synergy will be achieved by further fostering our international collaborations and by moving to the campus. A new location for the faculty and its student housing on the university campus will not only enhance the international character of the UT, but also facilitate collaboration with other faculties within the supporting environment of the design centre and other available facilities. We will continue to interact closely with our alumni as preferred partners in our capacity development activities. Entrepreneurship and innovation will be specifically targeted in our new capacity development activities and education programmes. Internationalization will be stimulated even further by offering new programmes that are also open to EU students in order to achieve a more global student mix. In general, we will facilitate internationalization activities within our University and participate in the UT Vision 2020 themes “Smart Cities”, “Health” and “Security”.

OUR CORE VALUES

SOCIETAL IMPACT SYNERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONALIZATION

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CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT: ITC AS KNOWLEDGE HUB For ITC, capacity development implies building capacity in domain-specific knowledge, skills and attitude at the individual and institutional/societal levels.

ITC therefore aims to achieve both individual and collaborative capacity building. This development reflects what happens in modern societies with a strong private sector. Individual capacity development aims will be addressed through education.

COLLABORATIVE CAPACITY BUILDING Since its inception in 1950, ITC has developed a broad global network of partners, and it wants to continue to actively pursue and elaborate our international partnerships within our knowledge domains. In general, many partnerships have already been established in the fields of education, research and other capacity development activities – in fact ITC is an established brand name when it comes to its mandate for organizational capacity development. We will first review and evaluate our past performance and impact, and then apply the lessons generated to enhance our present and future impact.

The ambition of ITC is to expand its reputation as a centre of excellence (knowledge exchange hub) in its knowledge domain. This requires the faculty to play an internationally recognized leading and coordinating role both globally and regionally. Our intention is to organize this together with other supra-national regional partners. Our focus will be on achieving impact in the global South. In addition, ITC will foster networks of multiple universities and institutes, leading to South-South collaborations.

To increase our societal impact, we need to be more visible and active in various international organizations, such as GEO, UN organizations and the World Bank.

We consider it relevant to align our activities with those of other main players in our field. Examples include space agencies in both the Northern world (e.g. ESA, NASA and groups such as CEOS) and the Southern world (e.g. SANSA, INPE, GISTDA, ISRO), as well as

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geospatial organizations (e.g. ISPRS, ICA, FIG, ISDE) and relevant universities − although this field is rather scattered. To ensure greater sustainability of such collaboration networks and the continuity of activities, we will attempt to establish long-term agreements and collaborations with major funding agencies (e.g. NUFFIC, DGIS, development banks) and national governments.

When it comes to more specific local capacity development and research, (public-private partnership) projects will be developed, preferably within the ministerial priority countries.

ITC’s aim is to contribute to context-specific spatial solutions to the wicked problems emerging in the global South.

To develop our entrepreneurial core value, we intend to actively engage with the private sector and take on the role of gateway (broker) organization, matching the interests of the private sector and societal demands − “from aid to trade”. We consider public/private partnerships (the so-called Dutch Diamond Approach) as the key to fruitful cooperation between government, knowledge institutes, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. Together with national agencies, we will actively explore the possibility of contributing to local and regional (small and medium) business development.

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RESEARCH In 2020, ITC will continue to be an internationally recognized leading research entity in geospatial sciences, with an emphasis on geo-information science and earth observation. We will maintain our focus on fundamental and problemsolving research, with an eye to those complex global challenges where spatial information can make a real difference. These complex interacting challenges often relate to claims for sufficient and secure food, water, energy, health, land and housing provision that are intensified through climate change and population dynamics. These different claims often lead to conflicts, disasters and non-sustainable development.

Each department will develop its own domainspecific strategic plan founded on the vision of the faculty and the University. They can propose changes and modifications in the domain (chair) plan (including tenure track positions).

Departments will increase focus on cuttingedge (fundamental and problem-oriented) research topics and pursue complementary collaboration with local, national and international research groups. In order to tackle global challenges in the future, ITC’s research activities will develop more towards future process-oriented spatial research that allows multi-stakeholder participation. We continuously strive for a better research assessment by improving the quality and relevance of our research and publishing in high-quality journals.

All our PhD students are members of the ITC-Twente Graduate School (TGS). ITC will encourage the PhD student body to initiate and organize student-led activities that enhance the intellectual and scientific aspects of student life. Specific PhD courses will be developed to support the training of our PhD

students. National graduate schools will be used to provide our students with access and exposure to the Dutch national knowledge infrastructure and courses of this national graduate school.

Given the Vision 2020 ambitions of the UT, we will conduct a systematic review of the potential for collaborating with other UT groups on the Vision 2020 focal themes “Smart Cities”, “Health” and “Security”. Specific emphasis will be placed on groups that can provide complementary expertise in gamma sciences. ITC will take the lead in developing a joint research programme with identified relevant and interested research groups. We expect to work jointly on the identified research themes within the faculty and with partners.

ITC’s IT and data infrastructure will be brought to the level expected of a leading centre of remote sensing and GIS. We will develop a data policy that addresses all relevant aspects of (big and open) data science, with institution-level management of ITC’s data resources.

Our laboratory facilities will be reviewed and updated based on the identified needs of the departments. ITC aims to provide cutting-edge technology for its research and education, based on multi-annual laboratory equipment programming.

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EDUCATION The international education landscape is continuously changing. There is now a growing demand for a different mix of modalities and teaching approaches. As in the UT Vision 2020, ITC sees “blended learning” − defined as education that combines face-to-face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities − as a suitably flexible answer to these changing demands. With a view to having an international classroom, ITC seeks a globally balanced student mix in the current MSc programme. ITC will therefore target not only the priority countries but also the Americas and Europe for student recruitment, in order to guarantee the wide cultural diversity of our student population. These student recruitment activities will lead to more students who will increasingly spend less time at ITC. We aim to award at least 200 diplomas every year within our current MSc programme, while with the new initial MSc programme up and running an additional 50 diplomas a year can be expected by 2020.

Within the UT, education is based on the triple O concept. This stands for research (Dutch: Onderzoek), design (Dutch: Ontwerp), and entrepreneurial and organizational skills (Dutch: Ondernemen/Organiseren). ITC will increase the visibility of these three dimensions in its current curriculum. We will give our MSc students the opportunity to participate in publicprivate partnership projects initiated by ITC and other organizations. It remains our continuing aim and ambition to maintain and improve all quality aspects of our courses as evaluated in the (re)accreditation cycle every five years. The following developments will take place in the coming years.

ITC KNOWLEDGE DOMAIN TO BE ACCESSIBLE TO BOTH EU AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS In order to serve Dutch and EU students too within our knowledge domain and train them in typical UT engineering approaches for designing future-oriented solutions to the world’s grand challenges, we will finalise the development of a new initial international MSc programme together with other faculties. This choice implies the need to align the academic schedule with the general UT calendar.

SUPPORTING INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT Lifelong learning is becoming the standard. There is also a shift in demand towards a recognized MSc degree. However, institutes and companies consider it undesirable to send their employees away for prolonged periods of time. This triggers a demand for either part-time and/or distance education or a modular approach that can ultimately lead to a recognized MSc degree. We intend that this new design will also lower the perceived study load for our students.

BLENDED LEARNING, INTERNATIONAL CLASSROOMS, LIFELONG LEARNING

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A recent educational trend in Europe is towards more individual demands that are also embodied in the “lifelong learning” philosophy. To accommodate this trend, ITC will develop different educational routes with modular building blocks. This approach should allow more emphasis on the individual level; changing modalities of teaching; a more direct link with ongoing research projects; and access for the talented students to excellence tracks within the TGS-ITC graduate programme. This new direction will require the student administration support unit (BOOZ) to accommodate these new modalities in its support systems.

ADVANCED COLLABORATION WITH PARTNER INSTITUTES AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT ITC’s JEP partner institutions have clear ambitions to build a strong academic profile, with a growing demand for MSc and PhD degrees. This development requires ITC to move towards more higher-level education, including PhD education programmes. The newly established ITC-TGS can provide a good basis for developing joint MSc-PhD collaborations (with both our current and new MSc programmes) with our partner institutes. This development implies that there will be less demand for our lower degree and diploma programmes. Our partner institutes are already well able to provide this level of education themselves. We will therefore explore how the future of one-year professional master education can be secured outside the faculty ITC, in either the Netherlands or the priority countries.

MORE DIRECT LINKS WITH ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS OF ITC AND ITS PARTNERS Within our domain Geo-information and Earth Observation, technical developments occur rapidly. For ITC it is important to guarantee close links between the education programme and our university TGS research programme Space for Global Development. We will offer all our current JEP partners the opportunity to initiate more research collaboration through joint PhD research. Furthermore, we want to establish active links between educational activities and ongoing research and public-private partnership projects within the faculty.

MORE INFORMATION W: www.utwente.nl/vision2020 E: vision2020@utwente.nl

THE ROAD AHEAD

We will translate our ambitions into annual plans. Every year we will evaluate our progress and adapt the implementation strategy in order to achieve our goals for 2020. Given ITC’s commitment to its mission and the still growing demand for our expertise, we are confident that we will be able to make significant progress the coming years to realize both UT’s and ITC’s ambitions and targets.