ENCORA is on the road! I am happy to forward you the first issue of the ENCORA newsletter, which will keep you informed frequently about the activities and achievements of the network.

Probably in no region in the world so much effort is spent on coastal management and coastal research as in Europe, but fragmentation is a serious obstacle to taking advantage of these efforts at the European scale. ENCORA is a Coordination Action (CA) under the European 6th Framework Programme for Research and Development, aiming to overcome the problem of fragmentation. The CA establishes a European network structure with new mechanisms for communication on shared problems within and between the communities of coastal science, policy and practice.

There are many other networks for cooperation on specific topics and several of these are affiliated to ENCORA. On top of existing European cooperation ENCORA adds some special services. For instance, if you are facing a new issue referring to coastal practice, policy or science, you might be interested to exchange knowledge and experience with other European colleagues, who deal – or have dealt - with similar problems. In this case you can call on ENCORA to identify such colleagues and to help you establishing or extending your personal network. We invite you to take advantage of this free service by contacting the national coordination office in your country.

Another example is the development of the WIKI Coastal Directory, where you can find information on existing best practices, policies and scientific/technical knowledge. Coastal planning is a hot issue in many European coastal regions. National, regional and local authorities are facing development claims, climate change and environmental requirements. Planners experience a strong need of knowledge and experience to deal with these complex issues. However, no coherent and comprehensive sources are presently available to assist them. Filling this gap is one of the important objectives of Coastal Wiki.

During the coming year the ENCORA theme networks will produce a first version of the WIKI Coastal Directory, starting at the Valencia Theme Workshop 29 November – 1 December. Once established, we will invite you to complement the directory and to keep it up to date with your own knowledge and experience.

You will find more on these and other ENCORA services at the website www.ENCORA.org. I warmly invite you to join ENCORA and to participate in our activities to strengthen European cooperation in coastal practice, policy and science.

Job Dronkers,
ENCORA project director

At the Littoral2006 conference in Gdansk, 18-20 September, ENCORA organised a workshop on sharing knowledge and experience. This workshop was prepared with an eConference on the premise COASTAL EUROPE NEEDS A CONTACT SEARCH SERVICE. Some 15% of the Littoral participants reacted to this statement in the eConference and 40% participated in the workshop.

The need for better sharing knowledge and experience on coastal issues was broadly acknowledged and the development of facilitating services was welcomed. Participants indicated that they would search on the Internet first, before calling on the ENCORA Contact Service. Therefore ENCORA will develop additional services, including an Internet Contact Database. The ENCORA Portal will also be equipped with a ‘Google type’ search engine that scans through selected coastal websites. More advanced search can be done by the Coastweb portal of CoastNET, which provides semantic links. The ENCORA Portal will host several thematic forums, where participants can drop a request for information to colleagues who might have this information at hand. The ENCORA Coordination Offices will concentrate on search requests that cannot be satisfied by these contact facilities.

Some participants mentioned that experienced coastal professionals look for other partners to contact than starting young professionals. The latter category might be interested in the ENCORA Young Professionals Exchange Programme, while the former category will be put in contact with experienced colleagues working on similar issues in other European countries. This contact search service is a new facility, not yet well known. Many participants at the workshop believed that it has great potential, but that it will probably encounter in the beginning an attitude of ‘First see then believe’. Before becoming a routine mechanism it will be necessary to invest in promoting and explaining this service by showing results from practice.

The ENCORA Theme Workshop aims at elaborating a new concept in sharing European knowledge and experience in integrated coastal management: The EUROPEAN WIKI COASTAL DIRECTORY.

The WIKI Coastal Directory (or Coastal Wiki) will provide a survey of existing coastal knowledge and experience in Europe, with references to the most relevant sources published in the literature and on the Internet. It is intended for use in daily practice by professionals in coastal science, practice and policy. It will be embedded in WIKIMEDIA software, allowing expert users to update the directory at any time with new knowledge. The Coastal Wiki should become a major tool for keeping coastal professionals informed of recent developments and new major knowledge sources in their field.

The participants in the Theme Workshop will be invited to reflect on the outline of the Coastal Wiki and to contribute to the content. Participants contributing will be acknowledged as author or co-author of one or several articles in the forthcoming directory, describing the main ideas of the state of the art in their field.

The following themes will participate in the Valencia workshop:
Theme 3: Marine and coastal spatial planning
Theme 4: Pollution: prevention, detection and mitigation
Theme 5: Long term coastal geo-morphological change
Theme 6: Effect of development and use on eco-morphology and coastal habitats
Theme 8: New Sustainable Coastal Engineering Techniques
Theme 9: Assessment of field observation techniques
Theme 10: Capacity building, training and education in ICZM.

The Theme Workshop will start with an introductory session on the 7th Framework Programme, the EU Maritime Strategy and a panel reflecting on user requirements for Coastal Wiki.
Are you interested to participate? Look at www. ENCORA.org for registration contacts and funding opportunities.