About

The European Joint Master “Copernicus Master in Digital Earth” aims at qualifying individuals to leadership in translating Copernicus services and the Digital Earth vision. Digital Earth, the vision of a ‘digital skin’ well established since 1998, highlights the interaction between humans and virtual representations of our world from local to global scales. More recently, this concept has gained traction as a framework for leveraging geospatial technologies for better management of our societies, environments, and economies in the form of a digital twin. Digital Earth, adopted in high-level ambitions by ESA (‘Digital Twin Earth’) and by the EC (‘Destination Earth’), is an integral part of advanced technologies including Earth observation (EO), geoinformation (GIS), global navigation systems (GNSS), communication networks, sensor webs, virtual/augmented reality, artificial intelligence, grid computation, etc. As a global strategic contributor to scientific and technological developments, it shall be a catalyst in finding solutions to international scientific and societal issues.

The European EO programme Copernicus offers information services based on satellite and in situ acquired geospatial data. The downstream sector, emerging from application-oriented data-driven solutions, is one of the key growing sectors in Europe and worldwide. Open data and information access is accelerating this trend supporting a range of societal benefits. Our Joint Master programme addresses the associated technical and managerial needs on a graduate level, entailing European excellence in key themes like atmosphere and climate, marine and land environments, human security and emergency management.

Paris-Lodron University Salzburg with its well-established Department of Geoinformatics builds on a 30 year record of educating experts for the spatial view. Excellent partners join this endeavour for the specialisation tracks in the second year: Palacky University Olomouc‘s leadership in geovisualisation and geocommunication, and University of South Brittany’s excellence in data-driven image analytics and machine learning.

Geospatial technologies have become indispensable elements in today’s information society; location connects information assets and provides the context for perceptions, decisions and actions. Value-oriented academic excellence and challenge-driven technical qualification is fundamental to more effectively addressing the Sustainable Development Goals and related ambitious policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal.