Citizen Observatories for Water Management (COWM) 2016
About:
Citizen observatories are emerging as a virtual and physical place where citizens and decision makers cooperate to gather and share information to promote innovative and shared solutions. Strategic decisions and policies that impact society and the environment require intensive data collection and interpretation. Such information provides an important basis for long term planning as well as short term response (e.g. to flooding, drought, pollution events, cyanobacterial blooms).
The COWM 2016 conference will explore the role and opportunities for active citizen participation in environmental monitoring and policy making. The event will provide opportunities to engage with researchers, policy makers and practitioners actively involved in improving our understanding of citizen science initiatives. Participants will discuss the growing potential of Citizens’ Observatories in empowering the society and improving the resilience at the community scale.
The meeting 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 and how to maximize the benefit of data emerging from citizen observatories.
Conference topics:
The following list covers some of the topics to be presented at COWM 2016. Papers on other subjects related to the objectives of the conference are also welcome:
- Citizen Observatories as support for catchment monitoring and management
- Citizen Observatories as support for crisis management and disaster resilience
- Methods and technologies for Citizen Observatories
- Social dimensions of Citizen Observatories