In June 2022, GEOTEC held the 6th AGILE PhD School. Now, last October 2024, GEOTEC held again the 7th AGILE 2024 PhD School. As in previous editions of the AGILE PhD School, this event -promoted and partially sponsored by the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe, (AGILE)- was open to doctoral students from all AGILE member organizations and took place at the Institute of New Image Technologies, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain), from November 27 to 29, 2024.

This year’s school theme was GeoAI for the Social Good. The first day was focused on fundamental academic skills. The second day was focused on topics related to the theme such as Mobility Data Science and Participatory Urban Analytics for Inclusive Data Innovations. The third day included discussions on Open Science and Reproducibility, along with group presentations. Find the detailed course programme, keynotes, slides and shared materials at https://begin-standrews.github.io/agilephdschool2024/.

The event brought together 20 people between participants, organizers and invited speakers: 13 participants from 6 countries (6 UK, 3 AU, 1 NL, 1 GR, 1 EE, 1 FI), 5 organisers/facilitators and 3 guest speakers. AGILE had the pleasure to have Dr. Anita Graser, spatial data scientist and open source GIS advocate, Prof. of Urban Analytics João Porto de Albuquerque at the University of Glasgow, and Dr. Rafael Verduzco Torres, Lecturer of Urban Analytics at the the University of Glasgow, All of them contributed their knowledge in key areas of spatial data science, urban planning and sustainability. During three intense days, all participants had the opportunity to learn from these experts, share ideas and collaborate in building a more innovative and sustainable future through the use of geospatial technologies.

In this edition, we experimented with two novelties. The first is that participants from previous editions of the AGILE Doctoral School took the initiative to organize the 2024 edition. This is definitely the right way to strengthen the AGILE community. So many thanks to Hoda Bakhshi (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Diego Pajarito (University of Glasgow, UK), Fernando Benítez-Páez (University of St Andrews, UK) and Alina Ristea (University College London, UK).  Big thanks to all four!

The second is that we created a short video of the event produced by the Communication Service of the Universitat Jaume I. Watch it on the AGILE YouTube channel!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8aa9p5Ozoo.

As a final note, below is the list of sponsors that made the AGILE 2024 Doctoral School possible. Many thanks to AGILE, INIT, GEOTEC and the Generalitat Valenciana (grant CIAICO/2022/111), the Department of Languages ​​and Information Systems of the Universitat Jaume I, and the Bell Edwards Geographic Data Institute (BEGIN) at the University of St Andrews.