Climate change is a far-reaching, global phenomenon that is already impacting many aspects of our society. The evidence base for observed climate impacts is expanding, and the wider climate literature is growing exponentially. Systematic reviews and systematic maps offer structured ways to collectively identify and describe this evidence while maintaining transparency, attempting to ensure comprehensiveness and reduce bias.
The primary theme of the MANILA workshop series is information retrieval for climate impact. The purpose of the workshop is to provide a venue for discussing, compiling, and advancing a research agenda for information retrieval for climate impact. The IPCC Working Group II (WGII) assesses the impacts of climate change, from a world-wide to a regional view of ecosystems and biodiversity, and of people and their diverse societies, cultures and settlements.
The MANILA workshop series brings together researchers, applied researchers, and practitioners in climate impact, information retrieval, natural language processing, and systematic reviews to gain a broader understanding of the information retrieval challenges faced in climate impact in general and by the IPCC Working Group II in particular. We aim to foster collaboration, discussion, and create broader awareness in the IR community of the unique challenges posed by the climate impact domain.
The MANILA workshops are focused on co-creation. They are not mini-conferences. The emphasis is on agenda setting, with stakeholders from academia, industry, governmental organizations, and NGO's. The key output from the workshops is to develop, maintain and execute a research agenda for information retrieval for climate impact.
MANILA25: A workshop proposal has submitted (January 2025) and accepted (February 2025); MANILA25 will take place on Thursday July 17, 2025 in Padova, Italy, as part of the SIGIR 2025 workshop program
MANILA24 took place as part of the SIGIR 2024 workshop program on July 18, 2024 in Washington D.C., USA
A position paper with a research agenda, based on the MANILA24 workshop, is due in late March 2025
A description of the MANILA24 workshop
The MANILA workshop series is an initaitive by Bart van den Hurk (IPCC Working Group II; Deltares Water Knowledge Institute), Maarten de Rijke (ICAI; University of Amsterdam), and Flora Salim (UNSW Sydney). Individual MANILA workshops come with their own program committees to help build the program.