IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2015 - 130

education
Fabio Dell'acqua,
Department of Electric, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering,
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy (e-mail: fabio.dellacqua@unipv.it)

An Education Experience
in Data Fusion and Remote Sensing:
The Pavia International Summer School Series
Abstract-The educational side of "Data Fusion" entails
training interested young scientists and practitioners.
Data Fusion is an intriguing yet tough subject and we
do not intend to tackle the problem of teaching it in a
very general manner. With this paper we just want to
contribute our modest experience on a specific "case
study": a yearly Summer School Series on various
themes in Data Fusion and remote sensing that has
been running for 4 years now. At the time of writing the
2015 edition is planned to merge into the GRSS Summer School linked to IGARSS 2015.
I. INTRODUCTION
his paper intends to offer the Data Fusion community some hints on an "Education Case Study" developed in a specific context, yet with an international
scope stated since its beginnings. Despite its specificity, clues derived from the organization of this School
Series may be useful in other contexts in Data Fusion
and beyond. The framework in which the School was
born is illustrated in the next chapter; in chapter III, the
School is presented in its various editions. Chapter IV
discusses some points emerged from the organization
of the series, and chapter V closes the paper drawing
some conclusions.

II. THE CONTEXT: EDUCATION
AND THE REGIONAL CLUSTER
The aerospace industry has been a powerful economic
landmark in the North-Western Italian region of LomThis work was partly supported by the University of Pavia through
its "Bando per Summer/Winter Schools d'ateneo" call for funding of
Summer/Winter Schools issued in 2010, and by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Pavia, through provision of student-support
man-hours in the framework of the "Studenti Part-Time" scheme.
Specific editions of the School were supported by specific financial
sources pointed out in the text.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2015.2417762
Date of publication: 5 October 2015

130

bardy. An estimated 4.5 G€ overall turnover for fiscal
year 2013 and around 14,500 employees give a rough
idea of its size. In 2010, regional industries organized
into a first Industrial Cluster, which was then formally
endorsed by the Regional Administration (decree #
IX/1817, 8th June 2011). In 2014, a regional call was
issued, inviting Clusters to organize into legal entities
and to become privileged interlocutors of the Region
on Industrial policy issues. The Aerospace cluster submitted its application and was accepted to form the
Lombardy Aerospace Industry Cluster [1]. At the time
of writing (March 2015), a legal entity has been established ("Associazione Riconosciuta" under the Italian law)
and regional Universities and research centers are joining in. Meanwhile, the regional Cluster has already
become part of the National Aerospace Cluster [2].
The Cluster arrangements included setting up
10 Working Groups (WGs), whose earliest assigned
task was to review the current situation in the Lombardy Region and its relationship with the rest of the
world. This was intended to lay the foundations for
the planned Technological and Strategic Plan, still
under development. Relevant to this paper, an "Education WG" (EWG) was among the 10 WGs, chaired by
the author of this manuscript. The EWG work, which
lasted for several months, led to a complete picture
of all educational activities relevant to aerospace in
the Italian Region of Lombardy. The output was to
become a major input to the writing process of the
Cluster Strategic Plan; the review was conceived as the
starting point to define the Cluster actions, envisaging
an effective link between the education system and
the production system. Later, the confluence of the
Regional Cluster into the National Cluster prompted
the "Education WG" to expand the scope of the review
to a national level [3]; work is still in progress to add
outer rings to the scenario, at the European [4] and
global level.
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