This newsletter is a special issue about the development of the Coastal Wiki, which was initiated at the ENCORA Theme Conference from 29 November to 1 December 2006 in Valencia. this conference brought together 115 coastal professionals from across the European Union and kick-started the process of developing initial content in the European Wiki Coastal Directory (in short: Coastal Wiki). The development of the Coastal Wiki is among the major expected outcomes of the ENCORA project. It will provide a web-based survey of existing coastal knowledge and experience in Europe, with links to the most relevant sources on the Internet and literature references. It is intended to support professionals in coastal science, practice and policy in their daily work. It will be embedded in the very user-friendly WIKIMEDIA software, allowing expert users to update the directory at any time with new knowledge. The Coastal Wiki is expected to become a major tool for keeping coastal professionals informed of recent developments and new major knowledge sources in their field.

The rationale of the Coastal Wiki is the fact that existing systems to search for coastal information are limited in several respects:

• information generally focuses on particular (often monodisciplinary or regional) aspects of a topic, without providing a coherent picture of relevant related aspects 
• information is generally presented in the context of either science, practice or policy, without establishing relevant links between these three disciplines 
• information can be outdated.

This hampers the use of existing information for dealing with complex coastal issues and for producing integrated assessments.

The strength of the Coastal Wiki is its capability to highlight relationships, to reveal context and to guide the user in a simple and natural way through related topics and towards existing detailed knowledge sources. The Coastal Wiki connects existing scattered information sources to provide coastal professionals with up-to-date, coherent, consistent and comprehensive information. It provides a common understanding of concepts in coastal science, practice and policy to facilitate communication among coastal professionals in different fields. It also serves as an information base for performing integrated assessments

If you are a member of ENCORA´s national or thematic networks and have not yet voiced your interest in joining the Coastal Wiki production team, please contact your national ENCORA Coordinator. If you are a coastal expert or practitioners but not yet an ENCORA member and find this process exciting, it is high time to join one of our national networks (klick on www.encora.eu/networks.php).

For further reading see www.encora.eu/coastalwiki/

What do the users expect from Coastal Wiki? Most of the articles will be written by ENCORA participants with a scientific background. But they are not the only users! Therefore several representatives of policy and practice were invited at the Valencia conference to express their requirements:
Mrs. Gabriele Gonnert, Hamburg Port Authority, Germany;
Mrs. Birgit Snoeren, DG Environment of the European Commission;
Mr. Martin Fernandez Diez-Picazo, Maritime Policy Task Force of the European Commission;
Mr. Vincent Favrel, DG Research of the European Commission;
Mr. Carlos Pina, Ministry of Environment, Spain. 
They made the following recommendations:

• Articles provide a synthesis, are analytical, and short (1-5 pages)
• Examples/case studies illustrate concepts/practices
• Links are made to selected external information sources
• Definitions/explanations are provided in a language understandable to the average user (e.g. mayor working in coastal municipality)
• A quality control system has been applied and quality control procedure an article or a statement has undergone is indicated
• The Coastal Wiki is as open, accurate, and objective (not influenced by interest groups) as possible
• Citable sources are indicated / referenced
• Policy relevance has been kept in mind and is highlighted (e.g. reference to Habitat and Bird Directives, WFD, EIA, Maritime Policy)
• The Coastal Wiki offers the possibility of becoming multilingual
• Information gaps are being pointed out.

Concerning languages, other projects (such as e.g. CoPraNet) have proven that the Coastal WIki will not be appealing to many local practitioners if there will only be an English version. Several suggestions were made to solve the language issue. For instance, we could add a multilingual glossary and provide a translation function for non-English users. The initial version of the Coastal Wiki will be in English, but links to websites in other languages will be allowed.

Pictures and most of the presentations of the Valencia meeting avaliable at:
http://www.encora.eu/documents.php and http://www.encora.eu/photo_gallery.php

The Thematic Network Conference on “Integrated Coastal Zone Management and Valuation of Socio-Economic Impacts”  will be held at 12th and 13th of March 2007, in Venice, Italy. This conference is organized by the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the Consortium for Coordination of Research Activities Concerning the Venice Lagoon System (CORILA), as part of the activities of the thematic network “Multifunctionality and Valuation” within ENCORA, the European Platform for sharing knowledge and experience in coastal science, policy and practice.
The Conference’s general objective is to give an overview on the present state of the art in Europe for what regards impacts from socio-economic activities, their consideration/valuation within integrated coastal management processes and their integration into the decision making process:

• Which impacts are relevant, and which impacts are specific for specific geographic/national contexts, (for instance tourism, climate change, marine transport etc) and how to analyse interactions between different activities in order to integrate them into the analysis of coastal zones;
• Which tools for impact analysis can be used, either specific tools for single specific types of impacts, or tools which are able to integrate and analyze the complexity of relationships and interdependencies between uses and impacts in coastal zones);
• Which valuation techniques in front of different types of impacts and technical, political, economic and ecologic variables, normally measured in scales and value units not comparable among each other - partly monetary and partly non monetary values. The challenge of constructing a transparent valuation process able to lead to sustainable and shared policy decisions consists in bringing together these different types of values into a single process considering each value system in the adequate way;
• How to support decision making in the presence of multidisciplinary problems, under the form of more or less formalized strategies, GIS and DSS tools which make decision making transparent and allow for a relatively easy to understand integration of a great variety of variables into the decision making process, or other organizational forms which allow for a good integration between quantitative science and engineering components with socio-political, regulatory and economic considerations.

Further information on the Thematic Network “Multifunctionality and Valuation” can be found on the thematic network’s homepage: http://www.encora.corila.it .
Practical information regarding the conference and the registration procedure will be available very soon at:
http://www.encora.corila.it/Events.

22-23 February 2007, Roskilde University

www.dancore.dk/events/workshops.asp