Meeting on SoE Drafting group
12/06/07 in EEA, Copenhagen
Minutes from the meetingdraft version /
Minutes from / Meeting of Drafting group State of the Environment and Trends
Under WG D – Reporting
VENUE / EEA, Copenhagen, DK / DATE AND TIME: / 12/06/2007 9:30 -17:00
PARTICIPANTS: / EEA: Beate Werner (EEA), Peter Kristensen (EEA)
ETC/W: Maggie Kossida (NTUA), Anne Lyche-Solheim (NIVA/JRC),
Drafting group representatives from Austria, Czech Republic, Belgium,Denmark,Finland,France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, UK (see participant list in Annex 2)
ANNEXES: / ANNEX 1 - Agenda
ANNEX 2 – List of participants
ANNEX 3 - Documents and presentations
CHAIR: / Beate Werner
RAPPORTEURS: / ETC: Anne Lyche-Solheim and Maggie Kossida
Access to documentation / All presentations and other documents can be found on the Circa system at:
ACTIONS AND DEADLINES / Actions and deadlines for countries:
  1. Identify which stations within the WFD monitoring networks (article 8) should be used for SoE reporting (Eionet stations), Deadline: 1stNovember2007.
  2. Reportingquality assured data for the selected stations or a subset of these (see point 1) from which data from 2006 are available for determinands given in SoE reporting sheets 1, 2, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16 before the end of 2007, Deadline 31December 2007.
  3. Provide written comments to new reporting sheets on water quantity, emissions and biological elements (3, 4, 5, 6, 7) by 15th July.
Actions and deadlines for EEA/ETC:
  1. Send overview of Article 8 monitoring stations with request to countries to identify SoE stations latest 1st September.
  2. Data request for SoE data for reporting sheets 1, 2, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16with specified format and guidelines for data processing will be sent to NRCs with cc to NFPs by 1st October.
  3. Compilation and quality check of reported data and transfer to WISE. Early 2008.
  4. Revise the new reporting sheets on water quantity, emissions and biological elements (3, 4, 5, 6, 7) according to comments received until 15th July.

Agenda item / Programme and comments
1 / Opening of meeting (Beate Werner (EEA))
Beate Werner (EEA) welcomed all participants and opened the meeting.
2 / Approval of the agenda
The agenda was approved with minor change of the sequence of agenda items: putting agenda item 8 before 7. This change is reflected in the minutes.
3 / Recent information from the Eionet and EEA National Focal Point meeting
  • Main points in information presented (Beate Werner, EEA):
  • Deadline for reporting in 2007 is postponed until end of 2007.
  • Evaluation of the test case 2007 data reports: Country performance using smilies will not be used as usually to rank the overall country performances, but can still be provided as feedback to the countries if they want to have it.
  • Discussion:
  • One country (Romania) reported difficulties in using the application for reporting Article 8 monitoring program.
  • Need for clarification on station selection for 2007 reporting (Switzerland). EEA replied that the stations should be selected from a set of stations as following the WFD implementation criteria for the WFD monitoring networks (as identified in the Article 8 reports). The non EU-member States of course are free to set up their own water monitoring respectively to their needs. A set of SOE stations should be defined equallyto ensure representativity and good quality of SoE assessments.
  • Reporting sheets should highlight the most important determinands to be reported, since these now include more detailed requirements than earlier, sometimes going beyond what is normally measured. Smilies should be given only according to reporting of these highlighted determinands (Germany).

4 / Recent information from WG D and WISE steering group, information on recent development of WISE and launch 22 March:
Information from the EEA and Commission
  • WG D info given by EEA (Beate Werner): SoE guidance Task 3 paper was presented to the WG D and the Strategic Coordination Group (SCG), and agreed with no major changes. Only editorial changes. Water Directors meeting will be 18th-19st June. No major comments are expected. This refers to the reporting sheets 1, 2, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16.
  • WISE presentation given by EEA (Stefan Jensen): Main points:
  • Map viewer and umbrella web-site: Different languages are provided. EEA has the role as the water data centre. Providing thematic info and data in WISE (WISE public viewer). The themes are found on the left hand side and includes a topic called “Status and monitoring” with information about Eionet water. Showing examples including guided tours (movies). Another topic is “Overview of thematic maps”, showing a lot of map examples for various parameters. On the right side is the data centre services, including the water data centre, member states reporting, data download etc.
  • From “stand-alone” EIONET Water to dataintegration in WISE: New ways of communication – from tabular data to interactive maps. Information on MyRiverbasin and competent authorities, European water bodies not at risk / at risk / heavily modified etc., water quality (NO3, PO4, NH4, BOD) in rivers and lakes, urban waste water and bathing water status, multiple spatial reference data (CORINE Landcover, Image 2000, Teleatlas layers etc.).
  • WISE is not a distributed system yet. By 2010 the ambition is that countries will be able to provide their data directly from their national systems. Necessary for this is a better harmonisation between WISE and national systems.
  • WISE is part of SEIS (Shared Environmental Information System): Strategic level (macro level), operational level and “quick wins”.
  • Reportnet will be the WFD and SoE/Eionet reporting tool (Central data repository, EIONET) ,
Comments/questions:
  • Checking of errors in the underlying data is needed (Germany).
  • EEA encouraged all countries to go through the data in WISE for their country and provide feedback to EEA on what should be corrected. A maintenance cycle for error corrections will be applied by EEA, so data in WISE will be updated 2 - 4 times per year.
  • What data treatment is possible?
  • Can trend analyses be done in WISE (Belgium)? EEA replied that time series can be shown for certain parameters (e.g. NO3), but so far only a simple line can be drawn to show the trend.
  • When will all article 8 stations be available in WISE (Sweden)? EEA replied: During the fall 2007 for surface water stations.
  • Evaluation.
  • EEA informed that ETC will conduct a user satisfaction study. A questionnaire is currently developed and will be sent out in September.
  • Need for streamlining of reporting to different directives
  • There is a lack of streamlining of reporting requirements for all Directives. Such streamlining would make reporting much easier for the countries (Sweden).
  • EEA replied that so far there are different reporting cycles for the different directives, but harmonised reporting will be handled in some years. This streamlining is taken care of by DG Env through the CIS – WD, SCG process, and is not EEAs responsibility.

5 / Relationship between Article 8 reporting of monitoring sites and SoE reporting
Ensuring that existing Eionet sites are continued in the SoE reporting and supplemented with appropriate sites. As the Art. 8 Information, i.e. the list of monitoring stations, has been reported under the WFD by March 2007, we can now define the SOE stations as a subset of these.
Main points from presentation given by EEA (Stefan Jensen):
  • 22 countries have now reported art 8 monitoring sites to WISE. Reports from 5 countries are still missing: BG GR, IT, MT, RO. 149river basin districts are reported using xml files, some of these were demonstrated by clicking into rod.eionet etc. xml files can be opened as kml file in Google Earth.
  • Table showing the different monitoring networks was shown with columns on Surveillance, operational, intercalibration site, reference site, etc.
  • Table showing counts of surface water stations by countries. The countries should identify which of these should be Eionet/SoE stations.
  • Summary of status of art.8 reporting: Efficient, timely submissions, many stations submitted (>37000 surface water stations submitted). Data quality needs to be checked, Eionet/SoE relation only identified in a minority of cases. Final confirmation of Eionet/SoE stations has to be provided by Member States

7a / Procedure of 2007 SOE-WISE/Eionet water reporting as part of SoE guidance Task 4 and 5 Data processing and handling, and requirements for technical integration)ETC Anne Lyche Solheim (NIVA)
Comments/questions:
The MS raised four main issues:
  1. Selection of representative stations and need for extension of the related September deadline proposed by the EEA
Austria, Sweden, Germany raised questions whether the EEA will propose the set of representative stations or the MS will decide on that, and expressed concerns for the end of September deadline. EEA clarified that the MS will choose themselves the set of representative stations based on their experience and expertise and considering the current agreed selection criteria (representativity of all types). Then the EEA will perform an analysis/evaluation of the selected set of stations and provide a feedback about that next year. The EEA would like the MS to identify additional stations on top of the existing EIONET stations as part of the SOE the exercise.
Concerning the timeframe for the selection of the set of representative stations, the MS requested an extension to the proposed September deadline in order to do a better quality assurance.
The EEA had proposed this timeframe (end of September) in order to be able to collect feedback during the National Reference Centre (NRC) meeting which is aimed to take place at the end of September – beginning of October. The ultimate goal though is to complete the whole test exercise by the end of this year. So, the final suggestion is to start communication on station selection in September, focus on data exchange during October and to have the full exercise completed by the end of December. The MS can take extra time to select the representative stations; the overall goal is to have it all done by the end of December and submit then the data to the EIONET data repository.
  1. Difficulty in reporting the data for the complete set of the representative stations
The MS (Germany, France, Latvia, Romania) expressed the difficulty in reporting data for the year 2006 for stations that where just set up, since usually they provide the data one year later. In the future they will probably be able to report much more data than in the test exercise from the full set of the representative stations. The EEA understands this point and this is indeed a test case, so it is suggested that the MS use this opportunity to define the SOE set of stations this year, even if they do not report all data, and then go smoothly into reporting more data in the future. In that sense these two major activities (selection of representative stations, reporting of data) may be considered a little bit independently. The data reported for 2006 from some stations may be a subset of the selected representative stations, using only those stations in which data are available from 2006. Then the MS go back and revise.
  1. Difficulty in filling all the requested information in the reporting sheets 14 & 15
The MS (Germany, Netherlands) highlighted that the reporting sheets 14 & 15 request a broad description of the stations with a long list of parameters on top of the information requested by the WFD Art. 5, suggested that maybe fewer parameters are enough, and requested whether the EEA will provide help in identifying the most important parameters? The EEA supported that the characteristics of the area, predominant geology etc. are part of the type specification of the stations, and it is needed for the EEA to do a type-specific assessments, and that is why sheet 14 was developed. It was suggested that the ETC/Water will highlight in bold font the most important parameters in the reporting sheets in order to set some priorities and facilitate the MS. The type specific characteristics though (4-5 parameters) are the most important to enable a typespecific assessment. Germany offered to also come back with a list from their side of what they feel it is necessary, for groundwater as well.
Concerning the reporting structure and format, the new specifications will slightly change from the old data dictionaries. The EEA will inform about the new WISE/SOE specifications. The procedure to obtain the xml spreadsheet on the EIONET CDR was demonstrated online, it is similar to the format used previously, but for this exercise the Microsoft Access tool will not be available.
  1. Clarification on proxy pressures
Sweden raised the question how the information on proxy pressure given on Water Body level via Art. 5 will be used and linked to the characterisation of the stations in the SOE-set. In addition to the information available via Art. 5 EEA still intends to do a proxy pressure analysis out of an EU-level GIS-analysis. The problem is that there is still no seamless Catchment database (map to be used in GIS analysis) available to do so. With respect to the appropriate geographical unit the “comparable sub units” as discussed at the moment in the working group reporting might give the right resolution smaller then the whole River basin district but aggregating catchments.
7b / Further development of other items in theSoE guidance Task 4/5. EEA Beate Werner:
Concerning the tasks of the Drafting Group as outlined in the mandate (task 4/5 recommendations to the WISE development and implementation), some parts are currently carried out, but there are some “keywords” like interoperability, comparability, QA, business rules etc. that need to be revised in the current draft guideline (task 4/5). There are headlines and keywords that need to be updated.
Interoperability: What is needed in order to make the Reportnet tool fully compatible with the MSs reporting system (there is need to agree on formats etc.)? So, the development of the technical side of WISE needs further discussion and maybe the interaction of other Groups. There are several revisions to be done concerning these other items, such as QA/QC, metadata, geostatistics, aggregation procedures etc. The mandate for the drafting group is currently limited to 2007, so the question is whether this Drafting Group will continue into 2008-2009 with a new mandate. This is food for thought for discussion for the meeting at the end of this year. It is also important to think how it should be coordinated under the different groups of the WFD, so we need to find out where the developments are happening so we do not duplicate work done by others.
6 / SoE Guidance Task 3 (Scope of SOE parameters): New reporting sheets
Discussion of further possible extensions of the priority data flow in the area of water quantity, emissions and biological elements; discussion of draft version of the new reporting sheets.
Please note that all documents and presentations from the SOE-drafting group meeting on 12 June 2007 in Copenhagenare uploaded on WFD CIRCA link: (password needed):
and on the EIONET site public folder:

6a / Water quantity/water scarcity (sheet no. 3) –
ETC Maggie Kossida (NTUA) presented the water quantity reporting sheet.
Comments/questions:
1)Problems with availability of data, especially concerning temporal resolution
  1. In many countries (e.g. France, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Denmark) the colleagues responsible for water reporting do not have access to monthly data on water abstraction, as required in the reporting sheet. Some countries also have problems with reporting monthly data for evaporation (Germany).
  2. EEA replied that monthly data are needed to allow assessments of seasonal variation. This is crucial, since water demands for irrigation, households and tourism are highest when water availability is lowest during summer. Moreover, climate change is expected to make the problem worse. EEA is exploring the possibility of using information from other sources to fill in some of the requested information. One possible information source is the detailed climate information held by the European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF).EEA advised the Member States to improve collaboration with hydrological organisations/units in their countries for water availability and/or statistical offices for water abstraction in order to either get access to data on monthly/seasonal scale or if such data does not exist, start a process with the aim of collecting such data in the near future. The same counts for the disaggregation of data on regional scale. Data are needed fitting to the River basin district. Regarding the spatial resolution, the information collected by Eurostat on national scale is not sufficient for relevant assessments.
  3. EEA added that the request for data in the reporting sheet truly reflects needs for data at the European level. The Commission is preparing a paper on water scarcity in Europe. Discussions with Eurostat have been taken up to improve the information on top of the Eurostat/OECD joint questionnaire, towards river basin related information.
2)Water scarcity is mainly a problem in the Mediterranean countries