iENFORCE2018 is our third conference series, after the first one in 2013 and the subsequent one in 2015. iENFORCE2013 and iENFORCE2015 attracted both local and international participants from various institutions and agencies. We have seen participations from countries such as Australia, China, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand and Trinidad and Tobago. This array of participants from different countries opened up valuable opportunities for direct engagements for knowledge sharing among researchers and policy makers. The most impressive was the participation from the Minister of Environment and Water Resources from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, along with other 14 participants from 11 agencies and private companies locally.
 
iENFORCE2013 and iENFORCE2015 have brought positive impacts directly to the participants via knowledge sharing and networking. Indirectly, they have also helped to promote Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) as a centre for environmental forensics research. In accordance with this, we compiled the proceedings for both iENFORCE2013 and iENFORCE2015 and had them published by Springer-Verlag and Elsevier, respectively.  We believe that these achievements can be sustained and enhanced in our upcoming conference, with the focus on publishing presented papers in iENFORCE2018 into indexed journals, other than the anticipated significant outcomes to the participants, UPM, and Malaysia.
 
iENFORCE2018 will again gather academics, researchers, scientists, policy makers, and students from local and overseas, who will share knowledge, ideas, and experience in (however, not limited to) the environmental forensic disciplines, as well as other traditional applied and social science disciplines. This includes Contaminant Sources and Detection, Environmental Fate and Transport Assessment, New Approaches and Applications, Governance and Management, and Socio-economic Factors. We aim to increase the diversity of our participants in iENFORCE2018 as the current environmental related problems such as loss of biodiversity, deforestation, air pollution, water security, increased urbanization, and destruction of coral reefs need to be addressed inclusively by integrating various levels of individuals and organizations from various sectors and fields. Each of these problems is interrelated in term of the cause and impact. Therefore, the understanding of the sources or factors driven the problem should be refined by covering various fields. Only after the intended source and the degree of the problems encountered is thoroughly understood can the effort to overcome and rehabilitate be effectively implemented.
 
iENFORCE2018 is planned to provide a balanced space and opportunity for each diverse research representative to share experiences and ideas. This is consistent with the theme iENFORCE2018: From Sources to Solutions that is to enhance participants' understanding on local, regional and global environmental problems and pollutions as a whole for a better solution in the future. To achieve the objectives of this conference, iENFORCE2018 offers certified hours for Continuous Professional Development (CPD) points by respective professional bodies. In ensuring the delivery of knowledge, we have prepared three series of pre-conference workshops; (i) Workshop on Forensics Investigation Techniques for Water Quality in Aquaculture, (ii) Workshop on Effective Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with SimaPro, and (iii) Workshop on Environmental Forensics Investigation using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing Approach. These workshops will be conducted at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, UPM before the conference.