D-TEA is composed of four courses delivered across two semesters in a sequential (non-parallel) format. This structure is designed to ensure a clear and coherent learning pathway. The linear organization serves two main purposes: • Focus and consolidation: Students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds can concentrate on one course at a time, promoting deeper understanding. • Progressive development of competencies: The minor follows a deliberate progression—from measurement and process understanding, to digital analysis, and finally to interdisciplinary application—ensuring curricular coherence and enabling students to effectively integrate their heterogeneous skills. In this framework, the present course—the first in the minor—introduces the initial pillar, measurement, by equipping students with the fundamental concepts and tools needed to observe, monitor, and quantify environmental phenomena. In this first course, we will onboard the new student cohort through access and motivation activities and socialization/shared-language sessions, using guided exercises to build a common vocabulary and foster collaboration across diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This course is made up of two complementary parts. The first part aims to provide students with the basics of metrology that are necessary for the correct development and analysis of measurement systems based on sensors for environmental quantities. Through theoretical lectures, students will learn how to develop data acquisition systems using microcontroller-based boards. In addition, they will learn how to ensure metrological traceability through the calibration process and evaluate measurement uncertainty. During laboratory experiments, students will have the possibility to develop data acquisition systems for the measurement of environmental quantities and verify the metrological performance of these systems against reference devices. The second part addresses the sensor systems for non-contact measurements (remote sensing), refreshing the main theoretical principles behind remote sensing and the relationship between measured signals and environmental variables. It will provide an overview of the main optical instruments employed in environmental monitoring (multispectral, hyperspectral and thermal sensors, LiDAR, etc.) and of the corresponding acquisition platforms: satellite, UAV (i.e. drones), and ground-based systems. In continuity with the metrological principles introduced in the first part of the course, the module discusses the range of measurable environmental quantities and the basic concepts of precision and accuracy in remotely sensed measurements. Specific attention is given to data calibration processes and to the identification of the principal sources of error, with introductory remarks on their implications for data quality. The concepts of spatially-explicit environmental data and multiscale, multi-platform acquisitions are introduced, with reference to the integration of satellite observations, UAV surveys, and in situ measurements. Laboratory activities are included, during which students will familiarize with real optical data acquired from UAV platforms and will be introduced to the main European environmental monitoring services based on satellite and in situ observations (Copernicus).