The annual ACM International Conference on Distributed Event-Based Systems (DEBS) provides a forum dedicated to the dissemination of original research, the discussion of new practical insights, and the reporting of relevant experience relating to event-based computing. Event-based systems are rapidly gaining importance in many application domains, ranging from real-time data processing in web environments, logistics and networking, to complex event processing in finance and security. The event-based paradigm has gathered momentum as witnessed by current efforts in areas such as event-driven architectures, big data systems, the internet of things, complex event processing, publish/subscribe systems, business process management, grid computing, web services, information dissemination, stream processing, and message-oriented middleware. The DEBS conference brings together researchers and practitioners from these various communities to share their views and reach a common understanding of current research work and open challenges. The conference also provides a forum for facilitating the exchange of ideas between academia and industry. This year, DEBS is specifically encouraging submissions on the role, importance and impact of events and event-based technologies in Big Data systems and applications.