The EC Research Programme Officer Jose Miguel Rubio Iglesias has setup a CIRCABC (Communication and Information Resource Centre for Administrations, Businesses and Citizens) Interest Group Citizen Observatories (Category: Research) for the five Citizens’ Observatories Projects to start sharing project documents or articles, create forums for discussion or share calendar of activities. CIRCABC is accessible to any user outside as well inside the European Institutions. An Interest Group is a private workspace shared by a community of users, which can upload and download documents according to the user profile. In order for a user to access the system, it will be necessary for you to have an ECAS account. You can ask Jose Miguel to give you the permission to join the Citizen Observatories group.

A major new initiative has been launched to develop an EU-wide association for citizen science.

European Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik welcomed the creation of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) at an event at EU Green Week on 6 June 2013. The new body will be based in London and headed by Dr Linda Davies of Imperial College London – the director of OPAL. ECSA aims to involve all European Union member states and engage five million people across the EU over the next four years.
Everybody is encouraged to join ECSA to promote best practice and excellence in citizen science. More information can be found at the http://www.opalexplorenature.org/euro-citizen-science-assoc-launch

The 9th International Conference on Air Quality – Science and Application will take place from 24-28.03.2014 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Deadline for submission of one page abstracts closes on 20 September 2013.
More information at the Air Quality 2014 web pages.

This FP7-Omniscientis workshop is going to be held in Arlon (Belgium) on the 7th of October 2013. Participation to this event is free of charge.

The invitation and agenda is available at the Omniscientis web pages.

The ENVIP’2013 Workshop ”Environmental Information Systems and Services – Infrastructures and Platforms 2013 – with Citizens Observatories, Linked Open Data and SEIS/SDI Best Practices ” will take place on October 10^th 2013 during the ISESS’2013 conference in Neusiedl am See, Austria. See http://www.isess2013.org 

The aim of the workshop is to provide an arena for mutual presentations and discussions about advances related to environmental software – infrastructures and platforms, with a special focus this year on Citizens Observatories.  See the invitation here: www.envip.eu