Working Group 2: Database development

ENCoRe relies on sophisticated and complex software technology. Constituting the main switchboard for development in this area, WG2 will bring together software developers in the national research groups to exchange ideas and information about key technologies, such as database design, interface development, web programming and visualization techniques. While the Swiss team is responsible for the development and maintenance of the GROWup system itself, its expansion is a highly collective endeavour that requires active involvement on the part of the data-providing institutions when it comes to adjustment and addition of dataset-specific GROWup infrastructure. WG2 will coordinate these efforts and also allow technically interested members of the Action to gain knowledge about how to develop and maintain relevant parts of the open-source code. The members of WG2 will also advise the Swiss team on designing and maintaining the central ENCoRe web site.

In addition to the work on the GROWup database, the working group aims to research and discuss new technologies for collecting and processing conflict data. The working group is regularly organizing training workshops to achieve this goal. For example, we had a workshop on remote sensing in conflict research using satellite data at the April 2013 meeting in Amsterdam. Moreover, a workshop on the analysis of conflict events data in December 2013 in Konstanz is coming up.