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Final Minutes
The meeting was opened by Mr. Evangelos Papathanassiou (EEA). He welcomed all participants in Copenhagen also an behalf of the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat. The agenda of the workshop was adopted as attached in Annex-I. The list of participants is in Annex-II. Mr. Papathanassiou informed the workshop about the present activities of the EEA regarding collection of data and information for the Dobris Report. He stressed that the EEA aims at optimizing and facilitating the flow of data and information from the originators in the different EU countries to the EEA. The LIFE DEMOWAD Project can be regarded as a step forward to a better comparability and accessibility of monitoring data from different countries. In the Wadden Sea Cooperation, a Trilateral Monitoring and Assessment Program (TMAP) was elaborated by the LIFE DEMOWAD Project in 1996 and 1997. At last year’s Trilateral Ministerial Conference (October 1997), the Ministers adopted common TMAP guidelines for a common package of parameters and a trilateral data management system which will be implemented in accordance with the Stade Declaration as soon as possible and which experiences will be evaluated at the next Wadden Sea Conference. The aim of this EEA/CWSS workshop was threefold:
Six data management systems were presented and are summarized below. The complete contributions are linked to the names of the speaker. Mr M. Joanny (IFREMER) presented a European-wide inventory of several national data management systems for marine environmental information. The systems differ considerably in their concepts, functionality, contents, quality and purposes. As a main result, harmonization efforts on the international level were strongly recommended in order to improve the output of comparable data and products. The ICES Data Centre, represented by Mr J. R. Larsen (ICES), is the international data center for marine environmental data with the most experiences in Europe. The main task of the ICES Data Centre is to compile, store and analyze data on the marine environment and on marine fisheries activities. This involves screening the quality and consistency of reported data and make it available, in preprocessed form, for expert workshops and assessment groups. Mr G. Lüerßen (CWSS) introduced the trilateral DEMOWAD (EU Life project) data management system to the meeting. DEMOWAD makes Wadden Sea monitoring data comparable and exchangeable with decentral and autonomous, but identically structured database units. The up-to-date concept could be used as model and case study for further developments. The AMAP data management, presented by Mr S. Wilson, utilizes thematic data centers to compile data from various wide-spread monitoring and research data sources, to respond to the general heterogeneous data situation. Different methods such as GIS, modeling and statistics have been used in preparation of the AMAP assessment which has recently been published. Mr H. Niesing (RWS) presented the REMSSBOT (Regional Environmental Management Support System Based on Telematics) project as an architecture for environmental information service based on an access to databases which are physically separated. The databases can be of different type (Oracle, Ingres, Informix, etc.) or structure and are accessible through the data catalogue (CDS) and telematical extensions. The web-based user interface allows the users to navigate in the meta data of several databases and a simple query making and storing functionality is possible. The system provides environmental managers with comprehensive but not harmonized information and real data of the connected databases. Mr J. Kroos (RIKZ) introduced the Dutch water data management system DONAR to the meeting. The whole waterbound environmental data is stored in a central database and partly copied in decentral autonomous databases. Data exchange is carried out only inside the Rijkswaterstaat via WAN. Wadden Sea data will be provided on the trilateral level by the DEMOWAD Unit. Mr L. Valdés (EIO) presented the IEO Pelagic Ecology Data Base in a written contribution. The data management system attaches importance to data reporting formats and data quality control. It also provides the user, besides with data in common formats, with analyzing tools.
On the second day, the workshop discussed and listed the main technical and administrational obstacles in the cooperation of national and international data management and elaborated recommendations for selected main issues. The assessment of the European environment needs a common environmental information base. Therefore, the available and relevant data for the EEA has to be delivered from the European countries through their reporting system to the regional intergovernmental organizations and conventions to the EEA, in order to avoid duplication of work. The AMAP, HELCOM and OSPAR deliver, as an example of successful data management, harmonized data and information of several marine monitoring parameter to ICES and perform regular assessments. Unfortunately the data and information flow of the most other relevant environmental monitoring parameter to the European level does not work sufficiently, although the EEA needs only aggregated data or the results and summarized output of the national environmental data management systems. Several administrational and technical gaps and difficulties on the national and international level were identified. Beside the poor existing data flow, the meeting also discussed the problem of missing definitions of data quality and reliability, reporting products, and possibilities for future cooperation to improve the data exchange from the national to the international level. The following technical and administrational aspects of the insufficient data management on the European level were discussed and recommendations for the EEA and the Trilateral Cooperation were made.
The European countries have developed and maintained their own data management models, which focus on national interests but also cater for the needs of reporting to international monitoring programs. Although these different models are in most cases sufficient for the national requirements, the information or the delivered products are, in a number of cases, not comparable on an international level. For a better tuning of the different national data management systems, a continuous information exchange between experts on the international level is an important element. Experiences show that the European Environmental Agency (EEA) has difficulties to get substantial environmental data from the countries, mainly because the direct contact is insufficient and there is only little response on questionnaires and data inquiries from the countries. Furthermore, if like in several countries autonomous regions and institutions prevent data delivery or send incorrect data to the national level, to forward data to the EEA is not possible. A better information exchange and further development of the EIONET (European Information and Observation Network) could improve the situation. A sufficient exchange of environmental information between the national and European level needs a suitable and practical management system with a defined network of institutions, responsible persons for coordination and reporting schedules and formats. This approach would give the basic technical and administrational requirements for the information exchange.
To guarantee a high data quality including a documented and continuous data flow on the European level, common standards and policies on data quality are urgently needed. The EEA will propose to discuss these mentioned above issues on the next Interregional Forum in the beginning of 1999. The meeting regarded a document describing the quality assurance is necessary when delivering data from the national to an international level. It should describe how the delivered data is collected, processed, published and generally used and how the data originators are involved in this process.
The comparability of international data also depends on the associated meta data. A standard definition of meta data handling and meta databases to guarantee the quality and reliability of this data is presently not available. On the meta data level ownership and other policy issues, like "who can use what data in which way", and on processing and data flow, documentation must be stored. The Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) of the EEA is a first step towards an international harmonization of meta data. OSPAR has used data quality rules for 6 years now. The usage of the CDS in the REMSSBOT project could serve as a model in this field.
The meeting regarded the involvement of the data originators as an important issue to increase the acceptance of a cooperation on an international level. To increase the acceptance of national and European data management systems by data deliverers and data originators, it is very important to keep continuous contact with them on an international level, to mark their products with their names and add additional links to their work. If this is the case, the data originators can identify their own data on the international level and recognize how the data is used. On international level widely respected organizations built up databases and perform data exchange and environmental assessments although on the national level, data delivery to international organizations always causes additional effort. The capacity of the national data management is already burdened with the collection of data, with organizing the national data administration and problems with data owner-rights, etc. For each project or program which intends to bring data on an international level, right from the beginning, a budget for the data handling has to be included or contracts are needed to build separate data products. The close contact between the data originator and the data recipient is important for the quality of the product and prevents that the quality assurance of data don't just take place during the assessment process. Beside the data delivery a documentation of the quality of data and the connected products is always necessary.
Because the technical development of data management systems is continuously ongoing, model and case studies on an international level are always requested. The DEMOWAD prototype started in 1996 and will implement further monitoring parameters and additional functionality during the next years. The trilateral data management system is a good model and case study regarding the concept and realization of an international data management system. Other international cooperation or regions can benefit from experiences made with the DEMOWAD model.
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