Mazovia (in Polish: Mazowsze) is Poland’s central region, covering an area of more than 35,500 km² (over 11% of Poland’s territory). Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is located in Mazovia.
The region accounts for over 20% of the country’s GDP. The main sectors are trade, telecommunications, financial services, insurance, IT, the motor and petrochemical industries. Outside Warsaw, Mazovia is a predominantly agricultural region with as much as 67 % of the area under cultivation. Mazovia has over 5 million residents.
The Self-Government of the Mazowieckie Voivodship supports the development of space and satellite technologies applications with the aim to meet the economical and social needs of the Region’s citizens and public administration. These activities concern both the organizational sphere (participating and establishing discussion forums and clusters of cooperation between public administration, scientific community and private sector) and the technical aspects (examining, testing and implementing satellite technologies applications). A number of Mazovian scientific and research institutions: Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Science, Institute of Geodesy and Cartography (IGK), Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW), Institute of Photogrammetry of the Faculty of Geodesy and Cartography of the Warsaw University of Technologies, Forest Research Institute, Institute of Environmental Protection, Faculty of Geography and Land Development of the University of Warsaw, etc.., and commercial companies are engaged in developing the Polish space technologies sector. The Satellite Centre for Regional Operations (SCOR) is a public-private partnership (co-founded by the Polish Ministry of Defence).
The Self-Government of Mazovia with support by, mainly, the Department of Digitization, Geodesy and Cartography and the Mazovia Development Agency, undertakes activities and projects aiming to implement innovations in space technologies which can strengthen central Poland’s economic potential. Among the outcome of these the Project “Establishing of application infrastructure of satellite positioning system in Mazowieckie Voivodship” under co-financing of the ERDF and the creation of the association “Space technologies cluster” should be mentioned.
There are plans for further initiatives – within the PECS (Programme for European Cooperating States, managed by ESA) the Self-Government of the Region may become a beneficiary of the project “Implementation and popularization of satellite techniques for geospatial analyzing of management of towns and city agglomerations in Poland” – and prospects for international projects. There are also plans to establish the Copernicus Relays Information Office in the Marshal’s Office of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship in Warsaw to disseminate information on satellite data that can be used not only by public authorities.
