University of the Witwatersrand - University of Edinburgh Space Research Workshop

An international workshop, which sought to advance Space and GIS-themed collaborations between the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Edinburgh (UoE), took place on 5 June 2023. This was a hybrid event with academics joining both online as well as in person. The workshop hosted topics around autonomous systems (robotics to data extraction), sustainability and equity in/with space and emerging technologies in these fields. This workshop was attended by academics who specialised in these fields from both universities. Dr Laven Naidoo, from the GCRO and Wits side, attended this meeting remotely and presented on the GCRO organisational role as a whole as well as the current GCRO projects within the Sustainability and Health themes. Some of the interesting presentations included the exploration of sustainable rocket propulsion gas, precision agriculture crop detection around the world, temporal carbon estimation across the African continent and machine learning and AI applications just to name a few. The GCRO researchers, particularly in the data analytics, informatics and visualisation theme, are excited to work with both the Wits and UoE academics on resultant emerging collaborations from this workshop with a visit to the University of Edinburgh hopefully happening later this year.