CCEW Symposium 2024

25 September 2024

This year, the fourth Symposium of the Center for Crisis Early Warning (CCEW) ‘Predictive Synergies: Crisis Early Warning & Foresight’ focused on synergies in approaches of crisis early warning and foresight approaches. For this, the CCEW Symposium promoted interdisciplinary exchange to encourage the emergence of new impulses on how advances in different approaches could be possible. In addition, the CCEW Symposium focused on the exchange between stakeholders from science, ministries and the private sector who are relevant to early crisis warning.

The new division of the CCEW Symposium into panel discussions on the first day of the conference and interactive working sessions on the second day offered a great added value to the event. The first day revolved around various contributions on topics such as natural language processing, prediction models and data acquisition. On the second day, participants in the working sessions discussed the potential and challenges of combining different approaches to analyzing (possibly) recurring conflicts.

The number of participants and the range of institutions represented showed that the annual event has become increasingly important over time. Early crisis warning and access to reliable information in view of current conflicts such as those in Gaza, Israel, Sudan, Ukraine and Myanmar are becoming increasingly important. Conflict data emphasizes that previous conflicts often recur and bring similar problems - often with new actors and alliances.

The results of the interactive working sessions have shown that research findings must be communicated in a way that is appropriate to the target group and that innovative concepts must be incorporated into the future development of crisis early warning systems. This is the only way to improve the prediction and assessment of crises and conflicts and further support the adoption of preventive measures.

Picture: ©UniBw M/Plank