The downstream space and geoinformation sector faces a number of challenges, including a gender imbalanced workforce, an aging society and a shortage of relevant skills.

Although a rich offer of academic training exists in universities, the actual offer is often focusing mainly on the upstream part of the space sector, while the downstream part, and especially the different application domains are underrepresented and lag behind the evolving needs of businesses public sector and society at large.

The Partnership pursues equal and inclusive access to quality training to activate more people for the space sector labour market across different vertical sectors and is committed to help and guide learners in their skilling, upskilling and reskilling efforts.

SPACE4GEO also aims at understanding the evolving needs of the sector, setting up a permanent observatory of skills needs and trying to anticipate future trends according to societal, economic and technological changes/challenges, supporting the implementation of the main EU Space Strategies.

The SPACE4GEO Large Scale Partnership wants to leverage on the results of the EO4GEO Blueprint project on space geoinformation and its Sector Skills Strategy, adopting a wider sectoral coverage to embrace not only Earth Observation and geoinformation but also positioning, navigation, secure connectivity as well as the use of data for security and defence, namely the entire so-called downstream segment of space economy.

The Partnership will not operate in isolation, rather in collaboration with other projects and initiatives in the sector, i.e. the Copernicus Academy and Relays, the UNIVERSEH Alliance, the projects ASTRAIOS, STARS*EU and GIS4Schools, or internationally with the EOTEC DevNet. The Partnership is also open to support and complement efforts pursued through the Union CASSINI initiative as well as the EU Space academy.

The partnership is promoted within the “Aerospace and Defence” industrial ecosystem and is fully complementary to the existing “Aerospace and Defence Large Scale Partnership” focusing mainly on aeronautics and defence and covering also the manufacturing and infrastructure part of the space economy, the so-called “upstream” segment.