Eye on Earth - the global citizen observatory EEA Microsoft partnership Water watch

Microsoft – EEA partnership Vision – Elicit a Climate Observatory Initiative by launching a series of environment applications to impact people’s quality of life as well as a series of joint marketing activities to create environmental awareness amongst governments and the broad public. Scope - Cooperation under the Climate Observatory Initiative, to be implemented by cooperation agreements and statements of services. Duration - Five years

First Cooperation Agreement Portal on Bathing Water quality - Built on MS technologies using EEA data. Main Futures – Virtual Earth, Water Quality ratings, Near-real time data, User Ratings, User Comments, Search for location, Gadget download Languages – EN, IT, DE, PT, NL EEA-MS Partnership announcement – Portoroz, Slovenia 14 May 2008 Launch – End of July 2008

Background Legal status: EU Bathing Water legislation coastal and freshwater bathing sites annually (2007 figures) submitted under BWD to EEA (first time in 2008 through Reportnet) Methodology: Various samples of 2 bacteria aggregated to an annual indicator for the past season The information system: Currently WISE map viewer and PDF maps on EU bathing water website

Strategic importance With so much information people need better ways of accessing the information: the portal will provide such access through e.g. mobile phones, Gadgets, and the portal. Information needs to be reliable, timely and accurate and also relevant and functional for daily needs. Environment is where we live: portals such as these also brings the environment home!

Benefits For Member States : Links and comparison across regions/countries Wider proliferation of own information Source based data provision enabled over time. Communication chain for local information including local languages For European level : More visibility of EU activities. Additionally communicate other water issues For citizens: BW information more flexible, timely and in-depth

What we already have…

Bathing water quality points in Eye on Earth

Simplification in near-real-time data

User Rating icons

Actors and architecture components SQL 2005SQL 2008MOSS 2007 AppMOSS 2007 VE Biz Talk Non-automated data flow GeoRSS Data Flow Virtual Earth

What else could be relevant for the portal? Population density in the EU costal zones

Population in coastal settlements

Oil spills in European regional seas

Eurosion: Costal erosion patterns

INGV* water temperatures *INGV: Istituto Nazionale di Geologia e Vulcanologia

INGV’s water temperatures (24/04/08)

Bathing Water Directive general provisions The public should receive appropriate and timely information on: results of the monitoring of BW quality and risk management measures to prevent health hazards, especially for predictable short-term pollution or abnormal situations. New technology should be applied that allows the public to be informed in an efficient and comparable way on BW across the Community.

Citizen participation Feedbacks - suggestions, remarks or complaints (Directive 2006/7/EC) Information needs - identify what the citizens want to know to complement the existing information on bating water quality Images and videos - provide instant evidence of global environmental problems.

So who is the new portal for?

Next on Eye on Earth – Water Watch More structured user comments User provided images, Web-cams Delegation of administration to countries/regions Historical data for all EU27 Near-real time data for 20 countries NL, DE, GR data via GeoRSS Simple Air quality with a possible link to healthcare information systems

Input

Output / users