On 14 January 2013, around 20 participants from the Austrian Earth Observation Community followed an invitation by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft / FFG) and UN-SPIDER for a one day Matchmaking Workshop in Vienna, Austria.
The day was split into two different thematic blocks and after a short welcoming from Thomas Geist and the FFG the first part of the session was opened by UN-SPIDER and focused mainly on: “Knowledge management for disaster risk reduction and emergency response, and bridging communities”. UN-SPIDER used the opportunity to present its various partnership and future collaboration opportunities. This was followed by presentations form the Austrian academia during which the Technical University of Vienna, Joanneum Research, Z-GIS and the IIASA introduced collaboration opportunities.
The second session focused on the topic of “Providing targeted advisory services to developing countries for disaster risk reduction and emergency response” and showed the efforts of UN-SPIDER within the framework of Technical Advisory Support. ZAMG, Sistema, EOX, and GRID-IT complemented this session on the Austrian side before presentations on the GMES service and on ESPI’s Integrated Applications Promotion Programme closed this interesting one day Matchmaking Workshop.
One essential cornerstone of UN-SPIDER’s success is the strong collaboration with the Austrian government and various Austrian partners. Especially events like the Matchmaking Workshop are very effective tools to present the challenges ahead, to focus on the steps accomplished and to strengthen the existing collaboration efforts. UN-SPIDER could effectively use this opportunity to better interact and network with the Austrian community and is looking forward to following-up closely on the matchmaking results and proposals of the collaboration made during this workshop.
If you interested in identifying specific partners in Austria dealing with space applications: A catalogue of Austrian Technology in Space is available online.
