Data management

Context

With the development of the European legislative corpus, which has grown considerably since the 1990s, it soon became obvious that the collection of paper-based reports to justify the implementation of European texts was insufficient and needed to establish structured and harmonized collections, which are the only way of guaranteeing the comparability of national situations.

To achieve these objectives, the ETC-Water, topic center of the European Environment Agency, has been entrusted with the task of creating the necessary structure for these collections (Reportnet) and some tools to visualize the collected data (Wise viewer, UWWTD viewer, E-PRTR viewer…).

IOWater experience

The International Office for Water has participated in several projects requiring data collection and assessments for the implementation of the Directives. For example, a project for the Environment Directorate General of the European Commission, carried out between 2005 and 2011 with INERIS, aimed at drawing up the list of priority substances * since adopted in a 2013 Directive (2013/39 / EC). This project led to the collection of 14.5 million analyses in 28 European countries and to the use of these data to produce documents for assessing contamination by these substances in order to decide whether they should be included in a European list.

Since 2012, the International Office for Water has supported the DG Environment in setting up a new information system to integrate, visualize and disseminate the data of the Waste Water Treatment Directive (see uwwtd.oieau.fr).

Between 2013 and 2017, IOWater, supported by 11 partners, led the Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRM) project, which aimed to set up a knowledge hub on ecological engineering applied to water.

* The Water Framework Directive adopted in 2000 (2000/60 / EC) uses the concept of priority and dangerous substance to designate pollutants found in aquatic environments throughout Europe and whose use must be reduced or banned due to their impact on water.

Possible services

• The International Office for Water offers its support to European Authorities, to set up support guides and practical tools needed for data collection, tools for analysis and representation or training for good data collection or to take charge of the tools developed to increase the quality of the collected data, for better implementation.
• IOWater intervention can take place either at European level or at the level of a country.
• IOWater has a team of engineer experts and doctors, including environmental developers, specialized thematic experts, and other specialized profiles to combine knowledge of the European organization and of its stakeholders and thematic skills. The flexibility of the organization allows defining a team focused on the problem to be dealt with.
• IOWater experience and practice, as well as its neutrality vis-à-vis all the stakeholders involved, also enable to provide support and advice by proposing a pragmatic and effective solution that can alleviate the conflicts between stakeholders.