The official OpenSense COST Action (CA20136) successfully concluded in October 2025, yet our mission to transform global precipitation monitoring continues to accelerate. OpenSense was founded to build a worldwide reference community dedicated to leveraging opportunistic sensors (OS)—such as commercial microwave links (CMLs), personal weather stations (PWSs), and satellite microwave links (SMLs)—to provide high-resolution, real-time rainfall data. This ongoing work is critical for enhancing hydrometeorological observations in the context of climate change and rapid urbanisation.

Our dedication to the exploitation of results has translated into tangible, long-term initiatives. The OpenSense community defined the technical, legal, and business frameworks necessary for operationalising CML data in rainfall monitoring. These efforts directly led to the establishment of the Global Microwave Link Data Collection Initiative (GMDI, https://gmdi.opensenseaction.eu/) and the initiation of an ITU recommendation on standardized CML data standards. Crucially, the community secured follow-up funding through a COST Innovators Grant for the SetGMDI project, starting in November 2025, which aims to establish a global consortium for secure and sustainable access to CML data, thereby improving early warning systems and water management worldwide.

We invite you to be part of this continuing revolution in environmental sensing. The community sustains this momentum through core activities, including maintaining the open-source software packages, continuing benchmarking studies, organizing quarterly Short Online Conferences (SOCs), and hosting the planned annual OpenSense Conference series.
If you wish to be informed of these ongoing developments, contribute your expertise to cutting-edge research, or participate in future events like the OpenSense 2026 Conference, please write us to join the movement.