Hendrik Westerbeek
Director,
Geo Employment Market Foundation (SAGEO)
The Netherlands

Biography
Hendrik Westerbeek has extensive national and international experience in the field of land administration systems and geospatial technologies. He has developed from a Dutch educated land surveyor to the position of Director and Secretary General within the Dutch Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency. Mr. Westerbeek is well-educated and holds a Masters degree in Natural Resources Management. For more than twenty years he has been involved in international projects.

Abstract
Tackle the Challenge for the Quest to Find Qualified GEO Graduates

Geographic information technology has become a crucial tool for tracking and addressing today's societal challenges including population growth, food production and climate change. Europe has a growing need for well-trained students in the field of geospatial technologies at all levels vocational, bachelors, masters. The European labour market has growing number of GEO jobs outside of the geospatial industry including agriculture, insurance and financial companies. However the European education community cannot keep up with the pace, it is not producing enough GEO qualified graduates to meet the demand of the job market. In order to tackle this mis-match, the Netherlands set up a foundation called the Geo Employment Market Foundation (SAGEO). It is a consortium of public, private and education institutes. They began as an ad hoc group in 2008 and after two years of major discussions and start-up activities, it became a formal foundation in 2010 and continues to gain much success. SAGEO launched a GO GEO campaign to promote GEO education, make it fun and increase student enrolment. SAGEO convinced five Dutch universities to collaborate and write a basic geographic information course "GI Minor". SAGEO created GeoPlaza, an interactive web portal for GEO students to find potential employers for internships, starter jobs and more. - SAGEO helped to change the landscape of GEO curricula, establishing innovative courses such as GEO Media & Design. SAGEO obtained funds from the Dutch Government and the European Commission for capacity building activities towards tackling the mis-match in other European countries between the GEO labour market and education community. Such information exchange as well as networking and raising awareness can help to increase jobs (cross borders), to strengthen the European economy and to help solve today's societal challenges. This presentation will share in detail how European countries share experiences with each other in order to learn and to offer support in tackling the mismatch between the GEO labour market and the GEO academic community (whilst respecting individual cultures, languages and customs).