From 2021 to 2024, three Regional Exchange Workshops were held under the GLOFCA initiative, bringing together government authorities, technical experts, and international partners from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These workshops provided a collaborative platform to share progress, align methodologies, and enhance national capacities in glacial lake mapping, downstream hazard assessment, and Early Warning System (EWS) implementation.

From 18-19 November 2021, the GLOFCA First Regional Exchange Workshop took place in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, focusing on “Lake Mapping, Monitoring, and Hazard Assessment”. The main objective of the workshop was to provide a platform to the national partners to provide their approaches and efforts regarding the mapping, monitoring and assessments of glacial lakes, and to demonstrate how this will be taken up and moved forward within the GLOFCA project.

As a basis for this workshop, the UZH team elaborated preliminary drafts of country-specific synthesis reports on glacial lakes mapping, monitoring, and hazard assessments for the four countries, based on published literature and shared with the national partners in the weeks before the meeting. In parallel, a prototype of a lake mapping toolbox was developed at UZH, which was presented to the stakeholders during the workshop. 

From 31 October to 1st November 2022, the GLOFCA Second Regional Exchange Workshop took place in the InterContinental Hotel in Almaty, Kazakhstan, focusing on “Assessment of downstream GLOF hazard and community hazard mapping”. 

In Year 2, the focus shifted downstream from the lake, to assess how an outburst from these lakes could impact communities and infrastructure. This assessment and related hazard mapping is fundamental for decision-making and planning of Early Warning Systems and other disaster risk reduction strategies. Therefore, in this second in the annual series of GLOFCA regional exchange workshops, the aim was to share national and international experiences on the topic of assessment and mapping of downstream GLOF hazard, to discuss assessment frameworks, modeling tools, field methods, and hazard classification schemes. 

Held on March 6-7, 2024, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this event brought together policy makers, governmental representatives, and professionals dedicated to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The workshop focused on the progress made towards the installation of Early Warning Systems (EWS) and featured discussions on the latest developments and outputs. The gathering served as a crucial platform for sharing experiences, enhancing regional cooperation, and discussing innovative solutions to mitigate the impact of GLOFs on vulnerable communities and infrastructure in Central Asia.