‘Basic approach: Reporting and data handling’ EMMA meeting 09.10.03 ‘Basic approach: Reporting and data handling’ http://www.eea.eu.int or http://www.eionet.eu.int

Reporting for water – WFD concept Requirements for information to be gathered from Member States to EU and International Organisations: 1. Assessing state and trends for the environment and the associated pressures, impacts and socio-economic driving forces that either cause or result from changes. 2. Checking compliance and implementation of EU legislation at a national level. 3. Use information on implementation and trends to assess the effects and effectiveness (including cost-efficiency) of policy, both before and after measures have been introduced.

Current situation: Overlapping data flows Eurostat EC EEA OECD UNEP The Public and Decision-Makers ETC DG NFP and other National Authorities NRC Other This is the current reality. Result of a historical development. The same people will have to report the same or slifghtly different data repeatedly to the various international institutions. Then these international institutions again have the problem to synchronise their data between each other.

Current situation of reporting the same quality element to different international organisations Same national data set, but Different reporting formats Different aggregation level Different units Different meta information High work load to countries Different assessments by international organisations

Target situation: Streamlined data flows Eurostat EC EEA OECD UNEP The Public and Decision-Makers ETC DG Other NFP and other National Authorities NRC REPORTNET This is where we could be in two years. Add one more level of abstraction. All data is reported to the data warehouse in EIONET servers, be they at ETC or NFP. From there the international players can then take what is needed. The data must of course be often packaged to dossiers: “This is the report of the Country of X to EC.” This can be handled by software. Data entry could initially be through forms or by importing spreadsheets and such.

Target situation: streamlining data use The requirement that the same data and information should be used for different assessments covering the same sea area requires that those organisations, who prepare such assessments would need 1. to harmonise their data needs and would need 2. to share the data that are reported by countries to the international level

1. Harmonisation of data needs The international organisations should use: same monitoring stations same quality elements and same parameters same level of spatial and temporal aggregation level of data Requires harmonisation of monitoring programmes Requires harmonisation of reporting guidelines Requires harmonisation of reporting formats and aggregation methodology

Reportnet tool

Reportnet usage by others Services adopted and maintained by other institutions Water framework directive (Joint Research Centre - JRC) Services of other communities hosted by EEA DISMED (United Nations Convention on CD – UNCCD) EPER (DG Environment – IPPC data flows) Upcoming co-operations - starting e.g. with a joint indicator discussion Environment and health data (World Health Organisation - WHO ) Environmental data exchange towards the 4th assessment (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe - UNECE) National adoptions of Reportnet tools (CDR) Under consideration based on information from Belgium, Germany and Slovenia

Development status of Reportnet tools OPERATIONAL Reporting Obligation Database / ROD (what is needed) Content Registry / CR (where is what) Central Data Repository / CDR (where the deliveries go) Network Directory / DIR (who does what in EIONET) European Repositories / EEA Dataservice (where the harmonised and compiled European product ends up) UNDER DEVELOPMENT Data Dictionary / DD (what exactly is it and how is it described) Data Exchange Modules / DEM (how to get it from A to B, assure quality of the delivery, deliver it into multiple formats) Indicator Management Tools / IMT (how is the data been communicated)

Reportnet – principles for development Principles of reporting workflows: Harmonised collection Provide once – use many Transparent information management Common validation and aggregation Policy relevant assessment Standards and technologies: Open source software environment (JAVA, ZOPE) Industry standard technologies (webservices, XML) Accepted standards (ISO 19115, ISO 11173, DublinCore)

Test of Reportnet with one data centre EMMA will be invited to set up a test with ICES as data centre, OSPAR, HELCOM and the EEA as users and Reportnet as tool. The results of the test should provide a basis for streamlining the present data flow from countries to ICES and from ICES to the users following the principles of the WFD reporting concept.

2. Sharing data: The Common vision

DIMS WDF reporting concept: In conclusion, the European Commission (DG ENV, Eurostat and JRC) and the EEA are committed to immediately start the development of a new, comprehensive and shared European data and information management system (DIMS) for water, including river basins. The system should be based on the concepts laid down in this document and should be fully implemented by 2010.

Start of sharing data: Spatial assessments Geo-referenced data necessary Background features (coastline, bathymetry, estuaries,...) in GIS INSPIRE initiative: European wide public data sets GMES: satellite based datasets Shared GIS system for spatial assessment and map production will support streamlining of data reporting activity: EUNIS marine habitat mapping activity: joint use of GIS of EEA and BSC (MoU) Requires development of concept and testing

Marine Convention part in DIMS EMMA will be invited to consider setting up a small working group to elaborate the marine convention part in the shared European data and information system including practicalities for a shared use of GIS with EEA.

Continue ongoing streamlining activities EMMA will be invited to support the activities on streamlining of EUNIS marine habitat mapping by the joint habitat steering group Fishery indicators and related dataflow by the joint group on fisheries