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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004 
  
assessment of the data by the end users, mainly the coal mine 
managers, provincial fire-fighting teams, and decision makers at 
local, regional and national level (Rosema et al., 2000). 
Project areas 
: d f 
TIT 4 
5 f 5 f 
bh + n 
^ Coal fire occurence 
Southern limit of coal fire areas Tes 
0 200400 500 km 
— — — 
  
  
2. KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER 
2.1 Knowledge transfer inside ITC 
Professor van Genderen started his research on coal fires in 
China in 1987, first on a small scale, but as of the 1990's, 
started to tap the expertise in other ITC scientific departments. 
By presenting the work being done at internal research seminars 
and newsletters, many more staff became involved and have 
contributed enormously to the development of remote sensing 
and GIS technology for detecting, measuring, modelling, 
monitoring and predicting the location, depth, size, etc. of coal 
fires in China as well as in several other affected countries such 
as India, Indonesia, Venezuela, etc. (Zhang et al., 1997). More 
than 10 ITC staff members have been actively involved in the 
coal fire research project. The main ones have been van 
Genderen, van Dijk, Koopmans, Prakash, Vekerdy, van der 
Meer, Maathuis, Sharif, Tian, Hecker and van Westen. 
2.2 Knowledge transfer inside the Netherlands 
In order to acquire expertise and resources not available inside 
ITC, the Institute involved many other Dutch researchers and 
private companies. By transferring ITC’s experience to them, 
they could quickly contribute their skills and thus provided 
"value-adding" to the end users in China. Organizations 
involved in the Netherlands included the Netherlands 
Geological Survey (RGD), now re-named TNO-Netherlands 
Institute for Technical Geosciences, the University of Delft, 
University of Utrecht, EARS BV, and GEOSAT (Rosema et al., 
1999; Zhang et al., 2003; Rengers F. van Weelderen, 1996). 
Copies of ITC’s research, publications, technical reports, MSc 
and PHD theses, etc. were provided to these partners. 
2.3 Knowledge transfer inside Europe 
As the technical, scientific and organizational/institutional/ 
management issues became increasingly complex, the ITC 
involved many other European centres of excellence and 
organizations with skills relevant to tackling the problems 
described in 1.1 above. These included the thermal LR. 
expertise of the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, 
Russia, the University of Dundee, Scotland and the University 
of Freiburg in Germany; the satellite image mapping expertise 
of SSC Satellitbild (now METRIA) in Sweden, the coal mining 
expertise of DMT in Essen, Germany, as well as several other 
German organizations who are now continuing with new coal 
fire monitoring project in China, such as the DLR, BGR, BAM, 
GSF and some universities. All of ITC’s many publications, 
reports, theses etc. were transferred to these organizations to 
assist them in their tasks (Cracknell, et al., 1994; Genderen J.L. 
van, 1996). 
2.4 Knowledge transfer to P.R. China 
Here the knowledge transfer process consisted of training 
Chinese researchers, coal fire fighters, coal-ministry managers 
at provincial and national levels. The training took the form of 
scientific research supervision (MSc, PhD, visiting scholars, 
Post-Doc researchers), on-the-job training in the field, on-site 
workshops, seminars and short training courses, developing and 
transferring the coal fire fighting plans and associated hardware 
and RS/GIS software to the on-site agencies responsible for 
managing the coal fires (Zhang et al., 1999; Vekerdy, Z. and 
Genderen, J.L. van, 1999). The main Chinese organizations 
involved are listed in Table |. 
  
  
e Airborne Remote Sensing Corporation of Chinese Coal 
(ARSC) 
e Beijing Remote Sensing Corporation (part of Shenhua 
Group) 
e  Xi'an University of Science and Technology 
e China National Administration of Coal Geology 
e China Geological Survey 
e Research Inst. for Coal Geophysical Exploration 
e National Remote Sensing Center of China 
e China Coal Research Institute 
e Provincial Bureau's of coal industry in Xinjiang, Gansu, 
Ningxia, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shanxi 
e Fire Fighting Teams in Xinjiang and Ningxia autonomous 
regions 
2 
  
177 
Over the past 15 years, the cooperation with the Chinese 
partners had gradually changed from one in which know-how, 
hardware and software was transferred to Chinese partners, to a 
relationship as equal research partners. The progress in China's 
earth observation capabilities and know-how has been truly 
spectacular over this period (Guo, H.D., 2003). 
3. EDUCATION AND TRAINING 
As a key component in this long term research project was to 
build up local capacity, much emphasis has been given to 
education and training. Ten Chinese workers have completed an 
MSc degree at ITC on various aspects of earth observation 
applied to the detection, measurement and monitoring of 
underground coal fires (e.g. Zhang, J.Z., 1996; Prasun, K.G., 
2002). Five researchers have obtained PhD degrees on this topic 
(e.g. Cassells, C.I.S., 1997). In addition, three Post Doctoral 
researchers and six visiting scholars have spent a year at ITC 
working with the ITC team. In addition, many on-the-job 
training courses, on-site workshops and seminars have been 
held throughout the effected provinces and autonomous regions 
in China's north-west, north and north-east.