Dear ISCRAM friends and colleagues,
I wish you all a joyful, healthy, and productive New Year. To begin 2024, I want to express my appreciation for your contributions and camaraderie as we renew ISCRAM’s mission of advancing knowledge needed to effectively develop and deploy information systems for crisis response and management.
The past year was special for ISCRAM, which celebrated its 20th anniversary at the annual conference in Omaha, Nebraska. Since the first ISCRAM Workshop was held in Brussels in 2004, our community has held 19 international conferences and multiple regional conferences, most recently ISCRAM Asia Pacific in 2022. Together, over the last 20 years, we have published over 2000 research articles in the ISCRAM Digital Library.
Looking back at 2023 allows us to recognize and thank people who have made invaluable contributions to the ISCRAM community over the past year.
I want to thank Deepak Kazanchi and his team for hosting a wonderful ISCRAM 2023 conference in Omaha. As ISCRAM lives through the events that bring us together, hosting a conference is both a tremendous undertaking and a vital contribution to the ISCRAM community. Deepak and the conference committee worked over two years to make ISCRAM’s 20th anniversary a success.
Please also join me in thanking Adam Widera, Bernd Hellingrath, Monika Rode and Berthold Penkert, and the rest of the ISCRAM 2024 conference committee as they have been working over the past year to prepare a truly exciting “pracademic” conference co-hosted by the University of Münster and State Fire Service Institute North Rhine-Westphalia.
I want to thank Caroline Rizza for her contributions as ISCRAM President from 2019-2023, a challenging period that required ISCRAM to navigate the pandemic and many other difficulties. I encourage you to buy her a glass of wine at our next conference!
Lastly, I thank our current board of directors: Anouck Adrot (secretary), Hossein Baharmand (vice president), Anne-Marie Barthe-Delanoë (treasurer), Olivier Galichet, Raj Prasanna, Filippo Sanfilippo, and Marion Tan. As volunteers, they work selflessly throughout the year to ensure that ISCRAM continues and grows in its mission.
Finally, looking ahead to 2024, I hope you will join me in doing the following:
- Renew your ISCRAM membership (€95) to be eligible for the reduced registration fee for ISCRAM 2024—a €100 EUR discount. Becoming an ISCRAM member allows you to vote during the annual general assembly, seek election to the board of directors, and propose ISCRAM-organized special issues, in addition to sustaining our website, digital library, including a new IDL that will be launched this year, and other essential infrastructure of the ISCRAM Association.
- Attend the ISCRAM 2024 Conference that will be held in Münster, Germany from May 25-29th, 2024. Please note the following upcoming submission deadlines:
- January 30th, 2024: WiP Paper Submission Deadline
- February 15th, 2024: Poster & Demonstration Submission Deadline
- February 28th, 2024: Doctoral Colloquium, Workshop & Tutorial, Practitioner Talk Submission Deadlines
- Follow the ISCRAM Association on LinkedIn for updates about the ISCRAM community. Please let us know of any news you would like to share with the community through this LinkedIn account.
Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing you in Münster this May!
Sincerely,
Rob Grace
ISCRAM President