ECDA was launched in 2013 and emerged from the annual conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl). It is supported by the European Association for Data Science (EuADS), the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC), the German Computer Science Society (GI), as well as other European classification societies (British Classification Society (BCS), Section on Classification and Data Analysis of the Polish Statistical Association (SKAD), Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAC), Japanese Classification Society (JCS)). ECDA 2018 includes the 42nd Annual Meeting of the GFKl Data Science Society and the Symposium on Data Science Education of the European Association for Data Science (EuADS).