The Eastern Alps Hydrographic District, partner of BeAWARE, is organizing the 2nd International Conference on Citizen Observatories for natural hazards and Water Management (COWM) that will take place in Venice, Italy, from 27 to 30 November 2018.

 The COWM International Conference is a biennial event that has been organized since 2016. The first edition brought together specialists in water, water resources, soil and environmental protection (international academic communities, professionals, public administrations, businesses and engineering companies), and stimulated and promoted both research and real world applications: the presence of experts from worldwide (over 75 scientific presentations by leading experts coming from more than 15 nations – from Australia to the United States, from Scandinavia to South Africa), confirmed the importance on an international level of the data engineering processes that exploit the potential of citizens’ collective intelligence, via mining of social media and monitoring of information provided directly by citizens.

The Conference COWM2018 will be the stage for all the ongoing citizen science and crowdsourcing initiatives. COWM2018 will bring together social scientists, surveyors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals from many countries involved in research and development activities in a wide range of technical and management topics related to citizen observatories and their impacts on society. It will be an opportunity to discover how to maximize the benefit of data emerging from citizen observatories in the fields of Environmental Monitoring, Natural Risks management, Land use monitoring and management. Detailed information on the Conference programme and the call for abstracts can be found on the website: www.cowm.eu.

BeAWARE project will participate in the Conference submitting a contribution to the session Crisis management and natural disaster resilience, specifically aboutDecision support in extreme weather climate events”.

Abstract submission deadline was extended to  18 May 2018