The 7th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshop (GWDAW2002) was held at the International Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Kyoto, Japan, on 17-19 December 2002. The GWDAW series is one of the important international conferences supported by the Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC). The workshops have been held annually, and the topics covered range from data analyses for all kinds of gravitational wave detectors to theoretical issues on gravitational wave sources.

This year's workshop consisted of seven categories of sessions: the status of detectors, space-based detectors, event search, detector characterization, coincidence of detectors and detector network analysis, new methods of analysis, and sources for advanced ground-based detectors.

The year 2002 was an epoch-making year for gravitational wave detection experiments. Some of the large-scale ground-based laser interferometric detectors (LIGO, GEO and TAMA) entered their initial or developed stage of observation, performing scientific runs with durations of several weeks.

As a result, many of the talks presented at the workshop were based on actual data taken from these experiments, and we were able to have more realistic discussions on gravitational wave detection. Furthermore, the successful operations of these laser interferometric detectors gave the gravitational wave community a strong motive to form a worldwide detector network, as practised by existing resonant-type detectors. In fact, there were reports on the simultaneous operation of five laser interferometric detectors, and a report on a plan for coincidence operations over a month.

There were also reports on future space-based detectors and their source studies from aspects of the data analysis.

Thanks to well-prepared talks and vivid discussions by the participants, the workshop was extremely fruitful. These proceedings contain refined and updated papers based on the talks given at the workshop and will provide readers of Classical and Quantum Gravity with the latest hot topics in gravitational wave search and detection.

Finally, on behalf of the scientific and local organizing committees, we would like to express our deep gratitude to the staff of IIAS for their warm and efficient support and to Professor Akira Masaike, an IIAS fellow, for his cooperative effort to hold this workshop at IIAS. Without their support, this workshop would not have been so successful.