Supporting the Use of Environmental Information Systems and Services - Experiences with a Course for Postgraduate Professional Education

At our University we developed a course for further training and professional education in landscape and environmental planning, developed in 2001 [1]. The main content are Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Data Management Systems, and Visualisation. We introduce relevant software, but apply and teach them from a landscape planning point of view. The course has three weeks of joint training, with partly online-guided self-study phases of four weeks in between. Our clients are mainly professionals from governmental organizations, as well as freelancers. Interestingly, the course helps us to improve our curriculum for Bachelor and Master nowadays [2]. Hence, we believe, the course contains as well as continuously updates somehow the most important digital methods and tools in Landscape Planning, strongly related to current and on-going changes of professional needs. One of those needs is certainly the increasing use of Environmental Information Systems and