Tectonic activity results in a number of permanent and/or temporal alterations of geophysical, geodetic, geochemical and geo-hydrological parameters of the earth crust. These alterations reflect changes in the crustal state of stress and may indicate that critical stresses have been reached. As a consequence, different methods of geosciences are in operation in order to monitor tectonic activity with the purpose of detecting regions and phases of critical stress on the basis of earthquake precursory phenomena. Although the problem of earthquake prediction has not been solved so far, some of the precursory information could probably be used to improve the existing methods of earthquake hazard assessment towards a high resolution time dependent assessment strategy. The aim of this Symposium is to bring together scientist who are involved in monitoring earthquake prone areas with those who are working on earthquake hazard assessment in order to discuss the possibility of getting better degree of confidence in a seismic hazard estimation by combining the know-how of both groups. Theorists presenting models of the possible impact of the inclusion of precursory phenomena in the hazard assessment are welcome as well.