Best Practices for Improving Capacity Building Outcomes through Professional Training: Insights from NASA's Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) Program

NASA's Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET), http://arset.gsfc.nasa.gov, has been providing applied remote sensing training since 2008. To date, the program has reached over 3500 participants, with 1600 stakeholders from 100 countries in 2015 alone. The goals of the program are to develop the technical and analytical skills necessary to utilize NASA resources for decision-support, and to help end-users navigate through the vast, freely available and open data resources. We discuss ARSET's best practices and training approach to improved data access and application of NASA satellite and model data for air quality, water resources, disasters, land, and wildfire management. ARSET follows an iterative approach where the end user community is engaged and data needs input is solicited throughout the training process. End-user data needs and feedback are also incorporated into current and future training content and communicated to NASA Applied Sciences Program principal investigators and data centers responsible for developing NASA tools, portals, data formats, and other data delivery structures. ARSET's success has relied upon 1) targeting outreach to applied science professionals both as training participants and collaborators in developing training activities 2) developing training content tailored to a specific to community's decision support activities and unique environmental challenges 3) promoting interactive forums during trainings to capture and assess end-user needs 4) training scientists within the program in science communication 5) adopting a contextualized gradual learning approach through online and hands-on instruction, and 6) conducting program evaluation, used to assess the benefit of ARSET to program participants and to plan and adapt future training content, methods, and outreach activities.