Huge Success for the French-Lebanese Summer School on Remote Sensing

Theia and the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Science of the American University Beirut (AUB) have organized jointly, with the support of the FPACUP European program aiming to foster the exploitation of Copernicus data, a 4-days French-Lebanese Summer School on Remote Sensing, from May 31 to June 3, 2022.

The French-Lebanese Summer School convened 56 participants coming from France and Lebanon, but also from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Italy. 65% were Academics or students, the rest representing quite equally public and private remote-sensing users. Notably, some were working in NGOs and UN Agencies, showing the growing interest for satellite data and rapid mapping for relief effort.

A program adapted to a large public

The first day has been devoted to plenary presentations and exchange by Lebanese experts from AUB and CNRS Lebanon and by French experts from INRAE, CNRS, IRD and the University of Strasbourg. These presentations have covered a large panel of themes and use of remote-sensing with some focus on agriculture, risk management and urban planning. 94% of the participants judged the content to have been a rather good introduction to the following three-days of training.

In the three following days, four different tutorial sessions have been proposed to participants: initiation to remote-sensing and Sentinel-imagery ; rapid disaster mapping, drought and soil moisture estimation. These sessions ran parallelly and offered to the participants the opportunity to gain theoretical knowledge & hands-on skills in apps.

The summer school has been very well received. 88% of participants confirmed that the session they registered corresponded well to their expectations. 82% judged the length of the training totally adequate. The participants were very interested with the material used by our trainers as a support for the session. All is now available online, and 18% have already downloaded the material from the session they assisted – 35% have downloaded all the material from all sessions.

Since the participants’ level in remote-sensing was very heterogeneous, the training team sometimes worried some would struggle and be disappointed. We are thus very proud to read that all feel now totally confident or confident enough to use what they have learned in their professional practice. And, perhaps more importantly, none feel not well-equipped to do so.

The Summer School at a Glance

Material

All presentations and tutorial material can be downloaded on our page dedicated to the Beirut Summer School.