Outcome of the 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow Lauri Klein, Marek Staron Rania Spyropoulou, Sheila Cryan, Tiina Dislis EEA and ETC-Biological Diversity

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow Why? Improving its usability Improving its cost effectiveness (And by the way) Do we give the dataflow a new name?

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow How? The quality control report by EEA (Nov.2007) The report of data managers ETC-BD (March 2008) The data managers at national level (comments collected by Etc-BD) Selected EEA users for building indicators, and assessments (e.g. Belgrade report, PEEN report), impact analysis (e.g. transport impact). EIONET Biodiversity Reference Centers

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow EIONET Biodiversity Reference Centers On the usefulness of this data collection for national purposes 1.Would the same data be collected for national use even if EEA did not request it? Yes 9, No 5 2.Is more data collected in the country than EEA requests? Yes 9 (but mostly in different and scattered formats), No 5 3.Is site data provided by other countries used? Yes 3, Not yet 11

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow Selected EEA users: Biodiversity Indicators Attribute used : area, date of designation  Data quality: When trying to develop the above-mentioned indicators, we realised there were some big mistakes from a few countries, for instance Sweden, which had multiplied all figures by This has considerably increase the total surface area reported as protected for NWE countries, leading to wrong interpretations Accessibility: At the official EEA site where is it is possible to download the "official" data there is 1) no warning there is an on-going work to clean the data 2) no warning about some possible errors, despite the automated quality report

EEA, Belgrade report 2007 Diagram showing the percentage of ECCA countries areas covered by nationally protected areas Source : Common database on Designated Areas, 2006 (Serbia, Romania, FYROM, Croatia, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania); GEF/UNEP/WWF, 2006 (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Taijikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan); WWF 2006 (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia) Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, 2006 (Russia) Ministry of Natural Resources and protection of the Environment of Belarus, 2006 (Belarus)

There is a bias in the production of this indicator because marine protected areas are taken into account in the calculation of total surface area protected while it is not possible, from available data, to assess the percentage of country coverage this represents. NWE ranks first before USA (while it was 2 nd in the Kiev report). This change in surface area covered was probably due to a mistake in some European data. EEA, Belgrade report 2007 Indicators prepared but not published due to inconsistencies in the database Source: the World database on protected areas, non updated version of the CDDA. European data were corrected. Conceptual problems remains in the use of the data Originally, WDPA versions 2000and 2006 were compared to show the increase in surface area designated between these two periods. The very large increase for NWE is simply due to a large progress in reporting! To effectively assess progress in designation between two periods, it is necessary to look at the “date of designation” field.

Indicator on : Cumulated area of nationally designated areas over time in 30 European countries for the period Source: ETC/BD-UNEP-WCMC-CoE Pan-European Ecological network, Taking stock, Council of Europe, 2007

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow Selected EEA users: spatial analysis for biodiversity and ecosystems Boundaries used Attributes not used at this stage  Accessibility: delays partly fixed with the last delivery; EECCA countries should be made available urgently Data quality: the problems of coding are not an issue for the applications described at 2. They should not generate any delays in delivery for this kind of use where the freshness of the data is an important quality.

Spatial analysis for biodiversity and ecosystems: 3 uses Pan-European Ecological Networks, for Council of Europe and ecosystem accounting at the EEA: Merged with N2K, the consolidated designated areas are used to create maps of probability of existence of a protected area in Europe’s landscapes; the derived dataset is named Naturilis; Experimental strategic assessment of Trans-European Networks – Transport (TEN-T) for DGENV and DGTREN: measurement and mapping of the consumption of GBLI and Naturilis by transport axes, providing a missing overall vision of potential impacts. Landscape net Ecological Potential:

The 2007 Expert review of the ECDDA national data flow The review by data managers: EEA and ETC-BD EEA Published Nov 2007 (all countries) On designations, sites, sitehabitats and boundaries ETC-BD Review draft,March 2008, EEA countries On delivery progress (tabular and spatial), mistakes, gaps On proposed structural changes and GIS On future development

Number of records per table per year (EEA countries) Year Table Designations Sites Siterelations Sitehabitats Digital boundaries * * Entry is showing data as delivered during period 2002 – 2005

Delivery progress of digital boundary data

CDDDA v7: Designations table (4) 100% of entries :countries Known 100% “ “ :designation Known 72.6% “ “ :A,B,C category Known * 99,64% “ “ :Original name Known 93,63% “ “: English name Known 59,13% “ “: French name known ** 56,25 % “ “: Law known* 44,47% “ “: Law reference known* 47.6% “ “: Responsible Agency known* 52.28% “ “: Number known * % “ “: Total area known * 96% EEA 91% EEA 65% EEA 51% EEA

CDDDA v7: Designations not present in sites table in 37 countries (4.04) Does this mean they are not used as yet? Or that these are designations on the basis of nominal protection of habitats and species (e.g. heathlands, forests) UPDATE DESIGNATIONS? Compare with Total area and number in table 4?

CDDDA v7: Sites table results (5) for 56 countries 100 % of entries: codes known 84.27% “ “: the national code known* 97.87% “ “ : size known* 85.24% “ “: IUCN Category known* 92.05% “ “: Year known * % “ “: Altitude known ** 80.92% “ “: lat- long known EEA 98% 84% 93%

CDDDA v7: Number of sites where size is 0 (5.04) In 34 countries How to read this? Perhaps relate also to GIS data?

CDDDA v7: Sitehabitats table (6) Only records where there are sites reported. What to do? EUNIS habitat classification or national reference and grid point of vegetation sampling? EUNIS habitat classification or Corine Landcover? Marine sites: How to find them?

CDDDA v7:analysis of GIS table (7) The issue of restrictions There are 98,984 polygons and sites. What does this mean? Marine sites: How to find them?

Mistakes? Tabular data Changes made at national level into database structure or field properties Update made only into sites table but designations forgotten to update, result is that some records in sites table can not be linked to designations table Look-up tables were not used, result is that there are entries in IUCN field or Habitat table that do not appear in look-up tables Site codes entered at national level Late deliveries in autumn, when update of European database has been performed already

Mistakes? spatial data Missing spatial data (site boundaries). Core set indicator – designated areas per country area – will be misleading if calculated only on a basis of tabular data as it contains lots of spatial overlapping. Not following the document “Nationally designated areas: guidance on geospatial data reporting for national experts for the 2007 data collection”. Missing or invalid CDDA site code entries. Missing metadata. Different scales. May vary from 1: 2000 and 1: to 1: Use of different GIS formats.

Ideas proposed by national data managers To add GIS size as new field To add date of establishment instead of year of establishment To separate sites as whole and management zones according to IUCN that belong to sites, into separate fields To fill those fields that are possible to fill centrally: PARENT_ISO code, NUTS code (from digital boundaries or coordinate), altitudes (on a basis of elevation model), coordinates (from digital boundaries), habitat (on a basis of CLC), size, where GIS size will be treated as official To develop online system, so that through web any national data manager could through login update data at any time To delete habitat table (indirectly) To assist countries for digitizing boundaries and developing spatial databases

Proposed structural changes in database (ETC-BD) Due to development at GIS basis collect data only through GIS, so that tabular entries will be minimized (only sitecode, designation code, law/article reference, site name, size, year, IUCN) Due to gaps and messages from national level delete habitat table minimize field number (autofill as much as possible centrally) clarify national/international deliveries (N2000, Ramsar, Biosphere Reserves etc) add field that refers to main protection object per site as well as management plan existence per site

Proposed changes in GIS (ETC-BD) Due to gaps Not to collect tabular and spatial data separately. Data should be delivered in geodatabase format. The best solution is mentioned in the chapter 7. To collect also point objects. All sites without area (trees etc.) should be delivered as point objects. Due to restrictions Restriction types should be added into metadata and/or to boundary files by countries. Restriction types have to be worked out at EEA level.

Fundamental issues for dataflow development Online updating by authorized national data managers as well as online downloads by authorized data users. Integrated reporting system with Spatial data CDDA in INSPIRE annex 1, CDDA should be part of Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) Link to species present or monitoring databases?

Overall conclusions: we need to Frame the future developments within SEIS and INSPIRE, Explore the direction this dataflow should take within biodiversity data management (medium term vision) Start improving by implementing first steps by the next reporting period (15 March 2009)

About Names? About Names? NDA dataflow Nationally designated areas DAN dataflow Designated Areas - National NPA dataflow National Protected Areas PAN dataflow Protected Areas – National Thank you for your attention!