IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2014 - 31

Moreover, less specialized
BSc aerospace-related courses
are made available where MSc
aerospace-related courses are
found-i.e. BSc level does
not add much to MSc level in
this respect. For this reason,
our attention was focused on
graduate degrees.
A total of 150 tracks were
examined, and 120 found
to be relevant for out topics of interest, containing
about 850 aerospace-related
courses. The pie chart in
Figure 4 shows the distribution of tracks per country.
United Kingdom, Italy and
Germany convey the largest
contributions, with roughly
56% of tracks altogether.

Keyword: "Remote Sensing"
0

400

450

Valencia
Catalunya
Florence
Southampton
Paris (Marie Curie)
Rome (La Sapienza)
Delft
Naples (Federico II)
Bremen
Trento
Aalto
Oxford
Munchen (LMU)
Zurich
Reading
Figure 2. Highest occurrence figures of European affiliations in paper found on Scopus with the keyword
pair "Remote Sensing".

4. Findings
As a first finding, relevant courses are offered almost
exclusively within engineering and sciences faculties. This
is not surprising, and it is also a consequence of having
chosen to look at the technical side of aerospace and not
to education in e.g. the economic and financial side of
aerospace industry.
The purpose of this review was to try and sort out the
possible common lines in European education in this
field. While it was rather simple when we performed a
first, rough test review on Italy, we've found a big complexity leap in extending the review to all European countries, because of several differences including in some
cases a difference in how the period of the MSc degree is
defined. Still, we could find some common lines.
It is our understanding that educational programs on
Aerospace and Remote Sensing in Europe may be organized into three main categories:
◗ MSc degree in "Aerospace Hardware": this type of degree is usually present within a department or faculty of engineering. It explores the aircraft or satellite
structure, and matters regarding them, in great detail.
The main objective is the study of the construction,
the propulsion, the motion, the aerodynamics and the
flight mechanics of the platform. In these programs one
typically finds courses related to fluid dynamics, gas dynamics, design of aircraft, techniques and technologies
of propulsion, aerodynamics, flight dynamics, design or
modeling spatial structures, planning and management
of space missions. We may find this type of degree at:
Imperial College London, The University of Manchester,
University of Surrey, Polytechnic of Milan, Polytechnic
of Turin, University of Naples "Federico II", Polytechnic
of Madrid, Polytechnic of Catalunya, Polytechnic of
march 2014

Number of Papers [www.scopus.com]
100
150
200
250
300
350

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

Lausanne, University of Toulouse. Some universities, as
University of Delft, Cranfield University, The University
of Sheffield, University of Southampton and TUM (Munich polytechnic University), offer a degree with a very
high level of specialization, examining in depth one of
the previous main topics.
◗ MSc in Remote Sensing and Image/Data Processing
or "Aerospace Software": in this group we find degrees,
which deal with the issue of data capture and processing from aerospace platforms. In some cases, as the
University of Valencia, University of Zurich and University of Rome "La Sapienza", the main topic is Remote
Sensing, in particular images captured by space-borne
sensors and the consequent information extraction. In
these courses, students learn the fundamentals of the
optical/radar sensors, the related data features and the
main image processing techniques. In the other cases,
the educational scope is multimedia data processing,
where Remote Sensing is seen as a possible application,

12
9
5
4

10
1

Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom

Figure 3. Distribution of units (universities) by country in the

selected sample.
31

http://www.scopus.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2014