From 2021 to 2024, three Exchange and one EWS Regional 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 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 developed preliminary drafts of country-specific synthesis reports on glacial lake mapping, monitoring, and hazard assessments for the four countries, based on published literature, and shared them with the national partners in the weeks leading up to 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 October 31 to November 1, 2022, the GLOFCA Second Regional Exchange Workshop took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, focusing on “Assessment of downstream GLOF hazard and community hazard mapping”. 

In Year 2, the focus shifted from the lake downstream to assess how an outburst could impact communities and infrastructure. This assessment and related hazard mapping are fundamental for decision-making and planning of Early Warning Systems and other disaster risk reduction strategies. Therefore, in the second of 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.

In October 2024, Almaty hosted a seminar under the GLOFCA project titled “Glacier Lake Outburst Flood Early Warning Systems: technical design, instrumentation and communication.” The event gathered national experts, technical specialists, and representatives from the University of Zurich and SensAlpin. The seminar fostered collaborative planning of EWS installation, technical maintenance, and operation within each country. During group discussions, participants also considered low-cost risk mitigation measures.