As part of its educational activities, SMURBS accepted the invitation and delivered a seminar on “Exploitation of Earth Observation and Novel Observational Platforms for Smart City Applications” at the Physics Department of the University of Athens on May 24, 2018.
The audience was comprised of students of the Master on Environmental Physics Programme and members of the faculty. The specialization of the audience provided a prime opportunity for SMURBS to present its approach of integrating EO and smart city methods, to delineate the state-of-the-art across the EO platforms’ chain, to which the students can be eventually part of, and finally to highlight the particularities of the urban landscape concerning environmental pressures, EO specifications and links to policy and the citizenry.
In the last part of the seminar, a Q&A session was triggered, and feedback was provided by the audience, in a lively manner, concerning its view on environmental pressures for the city of Athens and qualitative criteria a smart urban solution should uphold. Finally, the students, as potential participants in a Citizens’ Observatory, offered their opinion on what such an initiative should ensure: ease of interaction, integrated in other daily routines or smartphone applications and strong perception of impact.