فناوری فضا، توسعه پایدار و برنامه های کاربردی جامعه: اینترنت به عنوان یک تسهیل کننده

Among other approaches, space technologies are currently being deployed for disaster management, environmental monitoring, urban planning, health applications, communications, etc. Although space-based applications have tremendous potential for socioeconomic development, they are primarily technology driven and the requirements from the end-users (i.e. the development community) are rarely taken into consideration during the initial development stages. This communication gap between the “space” and “development” communities can be bridged with the help of the web-based knowledge sharing portal focused on space applications for development. This online community uses the development gateway foundation's sophisticated content management system. It is modeled after the development gateway's knowledge sharing portals (http://topics.developmentgateway.org) and draws from their expertise in knowledge management, partnership building and marketing. These types of portal are known to facilitate broad-based partnerships across sectors, regions and the various stakeholders but also to facilitate North–South and South–South cooperation. This paper describes the initiative “Space for Development” (http://topics.developmentgateway.org/space) started in 2004 which aims to demonstrate how such a web-based portal can be structured to facilitate knowledge sharing in order to bridge the gap between the “space” and “development” communities in an innovative and global manner.

A foremost societal objective for the 21st century is to realize global, genuinely sustainable development. Science and technology are considered amongst the most effective means to enhance growth and socio-economic development of a nation, and therefore space technologies (for example, telecommunications, Earth observation, and space-based navigation) can bring real-added value in different areas, either alone or as a complement to terrestrial infrastructures. Enhanced access to information (in a very general sense) supports the implementation of a sustainable development1 strategy. However, there is a lack of awareness about the potential of space technology applications by the development community, and an equivalent lack of awareness of this community's needs in the space sector. In order to bridge the gap and increase the awareness within and between the space and development communities an initiative was started in 2004 called “Space for Development” (http://topics.developmentgateway.org/space). This paper will describe the project and how enables knowledge sharing in order to bridge the communications gap in an innovative and global manner.