1. Previous EIONET workshops:
2002 EEA – ETC Water / EIONET workshop ’Progress on EUROWATERNET, Indicators and Streamlined Reporting’
Previous EIONET workshops:
2000: Silkeborg workshop
Joint meeting of the EEA NFP/EIONET inland water group and DG Environment Water Framework Directive Expert Group ‘STREAMLINED REPORTING AT THE EUROPEAN LEVEL-The role of EUROWATERNET/WATERBASE’
2001: Oslo workshop
Workshop of EIONET marine and coastal group on developing EEA priority data flows for transitional, coastal and marine waters

2. EEA member countries EU 15 member states + Iceland Liechtenstein
Norway
EEA candidate
countries
Stability Pact
TACIS

4. EEA Water Topic Team Anita Künitzer Niels Thyssen Hans Voss
                                                    
                                             
                                             
                                                
                                             
Anita Künitzer
Niels Thyssen
Hans Voss
Jan-Erik Petersen
Jock Martin
Peter Kristensen
Hermann Peifer
Andreas Barckman

5. EEA Water Topic Team
Anita Künitzer, marine and coastal environment, topic team leader
Peter Kristensen, inland waters
Jock Martin, work programme implementation
Niels Thyssen, acting programme manager
Andreas Barckmann, air emissions
Jan-Erik Petersen, agriculture and environment
Hans Voss, IEA tools
Hermann Peifer, EIONET dataflow

6. European Topic Centre on Water (ETC/WTR)
International organisations
1 partner
Lead organisations
National organisations
European Topic Centre on Water (ETC/WTR)

7. Information Retrieval System Data access and visualisation
E2RC
Reports
and Reference Centre Concept
Data Flows in EIONET
National Layer
EEA Warehouse
European Layer
Introduction: 
Public access to environmental information is an important right and an essential support to environmental policy making. In the 15 EU Member States, Directive 90/313/EEC on Freedom of Access to Environmental Information has led to the adoption or reinforcement of legislation on access to environmental information. It establishes a general right of the public to environmental information held by public and quasi-public authorities.
Furthermore, EU, and most of the EEA member countries, have signed the “Convention on Access to information, Public participation in decision-making and Access to justice in environmental matters” in Århus in June The convention establishes the public’s rights to environmental information held by public authorities, and upon EU’s ratification of the subvention, EEA will have to meet the obligations of the Convention.
In the 1998 amendment to the Council Regulation 1210/90, establishing EEA and EIONET, the role of the EEA as a reference centre for environmental information is reinforced. The amendment introduces a new task: “to ensure the broad dissemination of information on the state of the environment to the general public and, to this end, to promote the use of new telematics technology.”
Definition
The Reference Centre is a concept that stands for:
the part of authoritative information within the EEA Reporting System*) which is accessible electronically to all EEA users on the EEA Public Web site;
a series of Web based services which facilitate public access to the authoritative information as well as to relevant information developed by co-operating partners and other reliable sources.
The concept originates from the ENVISION document and is further developed in the Second Multiannual Work Programme (MAWP2) and in this document. Furthermore the revised EEA Regulation reinforces the role of EEA as a European Reference Centre for environmental information.
Objectives
The objectives are, in accordance with the MAWP2,
to facilitate access to data and information supplied to, maintained in and emanating from EEA and EIONET;
to facilitate access to relevant environmental information developed from other national and international sources.
By developing the Reference Centre, the EEA aims to establish a public information service that will be recognised throughout Europe as the main gateway to access easily understandable and well structured environmental information, wherever possible in the user’s native language.
Components
The components of the Reference Centre are:
1. The pool of authoritative EEA and EIONET data and information (“the Reference Centre content”):
· The Directory/Catalogue of EIONET Information Resources:
· EEA reports, brochures, newsletters, press releases, etc.;
2. Electronic version of products published on paper;
3. Products developed directly for the Reference Centre;
· The data in the Data Warehouse that can be made publicly available;
· Relevant data in the EIONET part of the European Layer of the Reporting System pyramid;
· Information on national Web sites nominated by the NFPs;
· Links/References to other information providers.
2. Web based services (“The Reference Centre Gateway”):
· Information Retrieval System, with three main types of search and retrieval:
· Free-text search facilities;
· Catalogue based search;
· Navigation through content by environmental themes, and featuring for example:
· Map-based search for geo-referenced data/information;
· Thesaurus (multi-lingual) search;
· Keyword based search (using specific nomenclatures).
· Data access and visualisation tools;
· Pre-defined reports/views of data/information in databases.
The EEA Web site and the Web sites of the ETCs are the Reference Centre Web sites. These sites will share a common graphical design and basic rules for organising the content.
Information on national sites, nominated by the NFPs, will also be available through the Information Retrieval Systems of the Reference Centre, but these sites are not considered as Reference Centre Web sites and do therefore not apply the basis rules for content management and the standard graphical design.

8. Data Flows in Eurowaternet
WWW
Waterbase Demonstrator
National Layer: EEA and Phare Countries
EEA Data Warehouse G L R E Q
European Layer:
Waterbase modules
Data Flows in Eurowaternet

9. Purpose of the workshop
Convergence of EWN and WFD (follow up of Silkeborg workshop)
Streamlining of reporting
With other Directives
With Marine Conventions
Progress on Eurowaternet implementation
By ETC Water
By countries
Waterbase development
Link of EWN to core set of indicators
The way forward