WISTCIS Workshop "E-working, Distant Training and Environmental Monitoring: New Opportunities" was organized by:

• Baku Scientific and Training Centre (BSTC)
• Azerbaijan State Economic University
• AZRENA (Azerbaijan branch of Research and Educational Network Association)
• EDNES Azerbaijan branch.

The Workshop was held by the project WISTCIS (New Methods of Working for Information Society Technologies Programme Promotion to Commonwealth of Independent States), which is funded by Information Society Technologies Programme of European Union and coordinated by "Earth Data Network for Education and Scientific Exchange" (EDNES, France).

"New Methods of Working for Information Society Technologies Promotion to Commonwealth of Independent States" (WISTCIS) project ensures continuity with the EC Telematics Applications Programme (TAP) support actions project "Support for Telematics Application Cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States" (STACCIS, SU 1116) that was implemented by UNESCO and EDNES in 1996-1999. WISTCIS develops Information Demonstration Centres (IDCs) deployed in STACCIS focal organizations in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine and encourages EU-CIS team teleworking for benefits of Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme.

WISTCIS IDCs are being established in the seven CIS countries, including the IDC at Baku Scientific and Training Centre (BSTC), Azerbaijan. Since the beginning of the project, IDC established in Baku plays an important role in the training of IT professionals in Azerbaijan.

The goals of BSTC as WISTCIS Azerbaijanean focal point are:

1. Further development of functions, structure and contents of Azerbaijan WISTCIS IDC at BSTC;
2. Development of the national WISTCIS IDC Web-site, including Implementation of the training courses on the EC Fifth Framework and IST Programmes;
3. Organization and running of WISTCIS Workshop "E-working, Distant Training and Environmental Monitoring: New Opportunities" in Baku 13-14 December 2001;
4. Implementation of collaborative browsing toolkit (CoBrow) at the national WISTCIS IDC for EU-CIS team work.

The call for application to Baku WISTCIS Workshop (Annex 1) containing information about venue, programme committee, organizing committee, themes of the conference and EU and CIS organizations and projects invited, audience, general schedule of the conference, submission of abstracts and registration, exhibition form and registration form, deadlines, accommodations, conference and exhibition fees, addresses and current accounts had been installed on WISTCIS Azerbaijan IDC Web-site and on WISTCIS major Web-site 5 months before the Workshop and have been visible on the Internet.

WISTCIS Workshop in Baku was the third project face-to-face gathering after the Kick-off Conference in Kiev, Ukraine, and Workshop in Kishinev, Moldova.

Baku WISTCIS Workshop was aimed to present the main tasks of the project, and to spread information and knowledge about new telematics products and technologies worked out by IST Programme in EU countries. In more detail, the objectives of the Workshop were:

• promote IST Programme to wide circle of interested people in Azerbaijan and other participating European CIS countries, by presenting IST and other European telematics products;
• provide in-depth demonstrations of relevant EU teleworking products for telematics users, developers, vendors and service providers in the European CIS countries with participation of potential EU team work partners in order to demonstrate potential capacity of IST Programme results to the CIS telematics community with the emphasis to the user-friendliness;
• introduce the forthcoming EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and encourage submission of new project proposals to IST Programme and FP6 with participation of the CIS countries. Contribute in this way to development of huge potential new market for EU supported Information Society Technologies products;
• provide current evaluation of the level of the Information Society development in the seven CIS countries participating in WISTCIS and specifically in Azerbaijan;
• provide face-to-face training to promote dissemination of IST Programme and introduction of FP6 to the European CIS community. Increase knowledge in the CIS community about the European Commission, Fifth Framework Programme, DGs, former, present and future EC programmes, and intellectual, technical and economical opportunities that IST opens for its participants;
• establish preliminary collaboration agreements between potential project partners in the EU and the CIS countries, participating in the Workshop.

The major technical goal of the Workshop was presentation to Azerbaijanean and other CIS telematics community of the following IST projects: E3Work, SHOPEAWARE, TEAMwork, TELEBALT, THINK, THINK-EXT, StarMate, UNITE. Virtual Presence System (VPS), which is being developed by University of Ulm, Germany, in the framework of WISTCIS project, was presented at the Workshop.

The results of the Eropean Union Telematics Applications Programme projects CESAR, CoBrow, CoBrow-D, CoopWWW, EKP were promoted by the workshop. First results of UNESCO project PARTNERINFORM "New Internet-based Funding Opportunities Service" were presented at the Workshop as well.

The Council of Europe EUR-OPA system of prevention of natural disasters consequences and NATO project "Seismic hazard in Caucasus" were demonstrated at the Workshop.

The Workshop was held on 13-14 December 2001 in Azerbaijan State Economic University (ASEU), 6 Istiglaliyyet str., Baku, Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan State Economic University

ASEU is the leading university of Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan. It has access to the Internet at the rate of 1 MB, which is practically the maximum rate of Internet connectivity for Azerbaijan. The latter is the main reason why the University was chosen as a venue for the Workshop. Another reason is the fact that ASEU is actively involved in distant education.

Plenary session took place in Conference Hall of ASEU. Sections took place in Conference Hall, and Small Conference Hall. Some presentations were demonstrated in lecture rooms of the University.

Topics of the workshop:

• Telematics and networking support for E-work, distant training and environmental monitoring:
• Distant training (9 presentations)
• Virtual laboratories and modern teleworking technologies (4 presentations)
• Telematics support for high-tech efficient usage training (5 presentations)
• Telematics for natural risk assessment and environmental studies (7 presentations)
• Training courses for building of new EU-CIS projects for FP5 and FP6; supporting teleworking tools:
• Training course on Fifth Framework Programme (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), The Netherlands)
• Sixth Framework Programme (FP6)
• Training course on Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), The Netherlands)
• EU-CIS Teleworking 2001 (JCM Consultants, France)
• Collaborative browsing toolkit (CoBrow) (University of Ulm, Germany)
• Microsoft Office distant education course (UNESCO/BSTC, Azerbaijan)

IST and other EU telematics projects presented at the workshop:

• IST projects: SHOPEAWARE, TEAMwork, TELEBALT, THINK, THINK-EXT, StarMate, UNITE
• TAP projects: CESAR, CoBrow, CoBrow-D, CoopWWW, EKP
• UNESCO project: PARTNERINFORM
• NATO project: "Seismic hazard in Caucasus"
• Council of Europe project: EUR-OPA system of prevention of natural disasters consequences
• International Scientific and Technology Centre (ISTC) project: "Virtual laboratory on fundamental and applied problems of elasticity theory"

The workshop was run by the following parallel sessions:

• Section 1 "E-working"
• Section 2 "Distant Training"
• Section 3 "Environmental Monitoring: New Opportunities"
• Poster Session

Before opening

The Workshop was opened at 10:00 on 13th December 2001 by chairman of Programme Committee, Acad. A.Abbasov, Rector of Azerbaijan State Economic University, president of AZRENA.

In his welcome address, A.Abbasov greeted all Workshop participants, and noted the great importance of the Workshop for IT development in the CIS countries.

Dr. Fatima Abdulla-zadeh, Head of Department of Social Affairs of the Office of the President of Azerbaijan Republic reported the present state of ICT in Azerbaijan and perspectives of information and communication technologies development. Mrs. F.Abdulla-zadeh pointed out that the Workshop would have a strong impact on the further development of ICT in Azerbaijan and implementation of the similar project deployed by the state of Azerbaijan.

In the plenary session the following speakers presented their welcoming speeches: Acad. M.Kerimov, President of National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Dr. J-C.Marot, JCM Consultants, France, and Prof. A.Gvishiani, EDNES Vice-president and head of Russian branch.

Mrs. M.Abbas-zadeh, Chairman of State Students Admission Commission, reported about the Commission activities in the field of computerization of admission exams, and the important role of the commission telematic activity for the whole Republic as the first element of e-government.

T.Aliyev, Director of Institute of Cybernetics, gave a talk on "Information Technology of Signal Processing with Interference Analysis". He showed the usage of new methods of information technology and teleworking in pattern recognition of signals.

Interest of all participants was attracted by the presentation on the present status of WISTCIS done by Mrs. T.Shulyakovskaya, WISTCIS project manager. She told about the project background, stages, implementation of IST tools, WISTCIS on the Web, and workshops that had been already held by the project.

After that Dr. A.Beriozko, WISTCIS project engineer, presented WISTCIS main Web-site and Web-sites of the project participants: Baku Scientific and Training Centre (BSTC), Azerbaijan; Information Technologies Centre of National Academy of Sciences of Belarus; Centre of Information Technologies of Academy of Sciences of Moldova (ASM); Centre of Geophysical Data Studies and Telematics Applications (CGDS) of Institute of Physics of the Earth of Russian Academy of Sciences (IPE RAS); National Technical University of Ukraine "Kiev Polytechnical Institute" (NTUU "KPI").

Prof. A.Gvishiani, EDNES Vice-president and WISTCIS project supervisor, in his speech told about WISTCIS, TELEBALT and other IST projects. The speaker noted the successful participation of BSTC in IST projects, the activity of BSTC IDC and its role as the national focal point in Azerbaijan. A. Gvishiani told about EDNES, planning of projects coordinated by EDNES, Azerbaijan branch of EDNES at BSTC, which includes 10 organizations. He also mentioned NATO project implemented by BSTC. The speaker reported on TELEBALT project, which is similar to WISTCIS and implemented by Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia under coordination of EDNES, and future project TELESOL, submitted to IST, in which BSTC would also participate. A. Gvishiani answered a lot of questions, which participants asked about IST projects.

After that the workshop was continued in three parallel sections.

"Distant Training" Section

As most of the presentations (17) were submitted to the Section 2 "Distant Training" it began at the second half of 13 December 2001 and was continued at 14 December.

Many different projects on distant education were presented and discussed. The distant training course of BSTC including 5 courses on MS Office 2000 applications (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, OutlookExpress) and Internet basics was presented.

R.Gasimov, teacher of mathematics of the rural school excited the interest of participants when he reported on adaptation of distant training to school teaching.

Section 1 "E-working" worked on 13 December.

I.Babayev, Chief of National "Election" Computer Centre, presented the new election system in Azerbaijanean Parliament and local municipalities, showed the scheme of real-time connected terminals of governmental telematics system located in different regions of Azerbaijan, which were used for online information exchange and processing, as well as for counting of votes.

Dr. M.Prager, University of Ulm, Germany, made the presentation on "Virtual Presence - Introduction and Application" - a new version of CoBrow software. He demonstrated an efficient method of virtual presence, when all participants of Internet meeting are able "to see" each other and establish chat, videoconference, to exchange ideas, make a trade, perform teleworking, etc.

"E-working Session". Presentation of M.Prager (Germany)

Azerbaijanean participants also presented their works on IT, e-working, development of databases in Azeri language.

Section 3 "Environmental Monitoring: New Opportunities" worked on 14 December.

On 25 May 2000 an earthquake with intensity 5-6 occurred in Baku followed by a landslide. This event emphasized a great importance for assessment of natural disasters and prevention of destructions in Azerbaijan. That is why a special section of the session was devoted to telematics applications for environmental problems.

While opening the session, Mr. A.Gasanov spoke about the results of researches on seismicity and seismological risk in Azerbaijan and importance of usage of teleworking tools in this field.

Prof. Jean Bonnin spoke about the telematics techniques applied to evaluation of seismic risk in big cities of Caucasus, including Baku.

Three Caucasian republics and North Ossetia participate in the project "Seismic risk in big cities of Caucasus. Methods of seismic risk management" under NATO "Science in the Name of World" Programme.

Analysis of seismicity, seismotectonic, geological-engineering conditions of the territory of big cities of Caucasus, and on their basis of seismic risk assessment, development of scenarios for disastrous situations, their prevention methods are foreseen in the project. That is why availability of on-line

Presentation of Dr. L.Reif (Germany). Interpretation and comments are done by Dr. A.Beriozko, WISTCIS telematics engineer

databases of strong ground motion, catalogues of earthquakes, and other Internet-based resources is of great importance for all project participants.

The obtained results may be used by emergency services of cities for planning during strong earthquakes.

Dr. B.Aliyev, head of the department of Azerbaijanean Committee on Construction and Architecture, in his presentation spoke about informatics aspects of studies of the condition of the buildings of Baku and methods of strengthening of weak vulnerable ones.

On December 14, at the second half of the day the parallel sessions were summarized by the Plenary Session.

Edwin de Vries (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), The Netherlands) presented the two lectures of the training course "EC Fifth Framework Programme of Information Society Technologies". The presentation was completed by the round table and evaluation of the training course by the Workshop key participants. Representatives of Austria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Germany, Moldova, Russia and Turkey participated in the round table.

At all the sessions, workshops and seminars the up-to-date facilities, such as multimedia and overhead projectors, computers with Internet connection of 1 MB, were at the disposal of the lecturers and the participants of the Workshop.

The programme of the Workshop is given in Annex 1.

On December 14, participants of the Workshop visited "Elections" Information Centre of the Central Election Commission and State Students Admission Commission.

Outgoing session in "Election" Computer Center of Azerbaijan

Mr. I.Babayev, Director of the Computer Centre of Central Election Committee, demonstrated the office equipped with modern equipment and software, told about abilities and prospects of new technologies applied for elections in Azerbaijan. Information about "Elections" computer center is available on WWW. The developers of the demonstrated telematics system expressed their interest in application of the EU teleworking tools, such as TEAMwork technology and European Knowledge Platform (EKP), in the system.

In State Students Admission Commission visitors met with Chairman of the State Students Admission Commission Mrs. M.Abbas-zadeh and got acquainted with the students admission regulations. According to regulations, admission of students is performed by testing the applicants in centralized form. Selection of personnel for ruling the examinations, grouping of applicants in the rooms for examination, selection of test exercises in the data bank, processing of results have been completely automatized and computerized. SSAC Web-site was demonstrated. SSAC Web-site presents all the necessary information, including news overview, date and time, as well as the results of admission exams. By the first month of operation of the Web-page, 1000 persons visited it; within a few days after exams there have been already 9800 visitors.

The article of Mrs. M.Abbas-zadeh about SSAC activity is presented in Annex 5.

Workshop participants were satisfied with the results of the visit and expressed admiration for election and admission systems their got acquainted in Azerbaijan.

More than 500 participants, mostly from Azerbaijan, took part in the Workshop. There were 15 participants from WISTCIS countries: Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine. IST and other European telematics projects were represented by experts from Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Turkey. Representatives from 25 cities of Azerbaijan participated in the Workshop. The latter shows that the workshop had really the whole country-wide significance for Azerbaijan.

Plenary session. The first from the left is Dr. Fatima Abdullazadeh, Head of Department of Social Affairs of the Office of the President of Azerbaijan, the first from the right is Dr. M.Prager, Virtual Presence System - CoBrow project, Germany

Most of the participants were representatives from Azerbaijanean IT organizations, branches of international institutions, educational and research communities, including students and postgraduate students, teachers of Azerbaijanean universities and schools, representatives of non-government organizations such as IREX, Open Society Institute and others.

Rectors of both state and private universities of Azerbaijan, including ones in Lenkoran, Nakhchivan, Gyandja and Mingechevir Universities, participated in the Workshop.

Taking into account importance of the Workshop, representatives of Government and President Office took part in it.

The participants and observers are listed in Annex 3.

Professionally, the audience included:
• university professors and tutors, students and postgraduate students, especially those involved in distance education and training;
• environmental scientists and geosciences specialists;
• scientists and engineers in applied mathematics and statistics, computer sciences, electronics and telecommunications;
• telecommunication service providers and database holders;
• school teachers;
• telematics users, developers, and vendors of computer hardware and software.

The result of the Workshop is the fact that wide Azerbaijanean telematics, research, educational, environmental and medical communities had been informed in details about concrete results of IST and other European teleworking projects. WISTCIS Workshop was the first event of such kind in Azerbaijan, and it arose a great interest in this country of not only IT specialists. The workshop attracted attention of national and international NGOs, university and school teachers and students, business companies and research organizations, government officials, etc. Minister of Informatics of Azerbaijan, members of Azerbaijanean Parliament took part in the workshop. Representatives of Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria took part in the workshop.

The Workshop was organized with the objective to encourage maximum interaction and activity among the European and the CIS participants. While achieving this goal, the following elements have been held: plenary and posters sessions, seminars, workshops, computer demonstrations and round table discussions. Plenary sessions provided different views about the concerned themes. On-line and off-line demonstrations introduced products and projects emphasizing their design issues, functions, etc. The demonstrations attracted active interest of the Workshop participants and initiated their active discussions with IST project representatives. The poster session gave an opportunity to advertise IST products and other European telematics innovations in a permanent way during the whole Workshop.

The Workshop was widely reported by local television, radio and other mass media. Many reporters were present at the Workshop.

The following IST projects were presented at the Workshop: SHOPEAWARE, TEAMwork, TELEBALT, THINK, THINK-EXT, StarMate, UNITE. The Workshop also promoted the results of the following EC TAP projects CESAR, CoBrow, CoBrow-D, CoopWWW and EKP. UNESCO projects PARTNERINFORM "New Internet-based Funding Opportunities Service", "Microsoft Office distant education course" and NATO project "Seismic hazard in Caucasus" were presented at the Workshop.

Sixth Framework Programme was introduced at the Workshop. Thus, the Workshop provided links between FP5 and FP6.

WISTCIS training courses on the European Union and IST Programme developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), The Netherlands, along with WISTCIS Manual "EU-CIS Teleworking 2001" developed by J-C. Marot, JCM Consultants, France, served as the core of the Workshop. These training activities attracted real interest of Azerbaijanean audience.

Azerbaijanean telematics projects were widely presented at the Workshop and attracted great interest of foreign participants.

The situation with the development of telematics and the implementation of WISTCIS project in the participating CIS countries were analyzed and discussed. In particular, WISTCIS Web-sites in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine were evaluated.

As a result of the workshop, abstracts of presentations in English were issued and distributed among the participants in hard copies and electronically. The book includes more than 50 abstracts (see Annex 4).

Quite a few preliminary agreements of cooperation were signed by the Workshop participants.

Rectors of Azerbaijanean universities expressed their wish to organize future Workshops in Nakhchivan and Gyandja. The latter are the centers of the two biggest regions of Azerbaijan, which have quite important scientific potential.

Annex 1. Call for Applications (.doc)
Annex 2. Programme of the Workshop (.doc)
Annex 3. List of Participants
Annex 4. Abstracts of Presentations (.doc)
Annex 5. M.Abbas-zadeh. The State Student Admission Commission (.doc)