Capacity building and impact

Capacity Development

ITC does capacity development via our three primary processes: education, research and institutional strengthening. However, the perspective on capacity development has changed over time. Seventy years ago it was seen mainly as training and educating individuals. Today, it not only involves activities which affect capabilities of individuals, but also organisations and the institutional context within which they operate [1]. The activities should focus particular on countries that receive official development assistance (ODA), and as such expect to contribute to the international policy agenda of the different dutch Ministries, such as foreign trade and development cooperation (BHOS). This also in an international context of considering the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to protect the planet and deal with social, economic and environmental challenges, the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Because activities are (at least in part) financed with means that are earmarked for ODA-related work, the relevance of the activities needs to be justified.

In 2010 ITC became the faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente.

The world has changed since our founding over 70 years ago. We started out as local mapmakers. The knowledge, tools and network we developed along the way have turned us into global sense makers.

Impact

ITC generates impact in diverse ways, moving research and knowledge frontiers, contributing to qualified professionals through teaching students, and empowering institutes and others to make better-informed decisions through purposely sharing knowledge with society.

However, different types of impact can be distinguished. In the atlas academic impact, and societal impact are used. Academic impact is realised via knowledge creation and dissemination. Societal is realised via knowledge exploitation and utilisation.

Academic impact is the proof that excellent research results in academic advances like understanding, method, theory and application across and within disciplines. Societal impact is the proof of what excellent research brings to society, economy, to benefit individuals, organisations and institutions. This type of impact type is further subdivided in categories culture (people's understanding of ideas and reality, values and beliefs), economic (a company's revenues and profits (micro level), and economic returns through increased productivity or economic growth (macro level)), educational (education, training and capacity-building, including through curricula, educational tools, and qualifications), environmental (managing and protecting the environment) , health (public health, life expectancy, health-related quality of life, prevention of illness, and reduced health inequality), political (how policymakers act, to how policies are constructed, and to political stability), social (community welfare and quality of life, and to behaviours, practices, and activities of people and groups), and technological (the creation or improvement of products, processes and services). The scheme in [2] gives a few examples and is used in the sections Institutional Strengthening to demonstrate the impact of selected ITC projects.

Impact is not, by default, positive or present. Systematic reflection on risks (negative impact on society and staff) with honesty and transparency are needed to increase positive societal impact in the future. Perspectives change over time. In executing our primary processes, and cooperating with our global networks ITC staff used to fly all over the world as illustrated in the maps on page xxx. These travels depicted look embarrassing with today's view on the CO2 footprint in mind.

The Atlas attempts to visualize ITC's impact, to justify and show its Capacity Development mandate to its stakeholders. It showcases the evidence of the long-term achievements of our activities in research, education and institutional strengthening. This is especially elaborated in the institutional strengthening section of the atlas. It should provide input for reflection and learning from ongoing/past initiatives to generate a stronger impact in the future.

Impact can not directly be influenced via our primary processes. We can only control needs (staff and facilities), activities (field work, experiments), and output (scientific publication, software). We might have a direct influence over outcome (citations, media coverage), but only an indirect influence on the consequences of people using the outcomes (the impact!). This chain of events is called the impact journey and based on the theory of change. An ‘reconstructed’ example is found in the Naivaisha project [page x].