Last update: 01/2004
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What is EIONET?
Objectives
How does it work?
Achievements
Who benefits?
The role of IDA
Background information
Technical information
Documentation
What is EIONET?
EIONET is a collaborative telematics network collecting and sharing environmental information between the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the relevant organisations in its member countries. EIONET consists of three main categories of connection points:
- National Focal Points (NFP): small units in Member States environmental administrations coordinating European activities (present in all EU, EFTA, and Acceding Countries);
- National Reference Centres (NRC): major research institutes collaborating with the NFP to provide the information for Europe-wide databases;
- European Topic Centres (ETC): special contractors to the EEA coordinating activities in thematic areas. Currently there are ETCs for air and climate change, inland and marine waters, nature and biodiversity, waste and material flows and terrestrial environment.
TERESA builds on this network and supports the development of applications for eEIONET - the electronic component of the network.
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Objectives
EIONET was established thanks to the same Council regulation (1290/90) that laid foundation to the European Environment Agency (EEA). The network responds to one of the EEA key objectives, which is to provide the information necessary to help decision-makers improve the state of the environment in Europe and make EU environment policies more effective, hence contributing to the 'protection of the environment and to support sustainable development'. The role of EIONET is therefore that of an 'observation network' which also ensures 'that the public is properly informed about the state of the environment'.
Reflecting the mandate of the EEA, eEIONET participates in gathering the information necessary to describe the present and foreseeable state of the environment from the following points of view:
- The driving forces causing environmental problems;
- The pressures on the environment;
- The quality of the environment;
- The impacts of it (e.g. on human health and ecosystems);
- The political targets and responses to it.
Priority areas in environmental issues and related sectors are therefore:
- Air pollution
- Chemicals
- Climate change
- Transport
- Water Stress
- Energy
- Nature/Biodiversity
- Agriculture
- Terrestrial environment
- Tourism
- Waste/material flows
- Fisheries
- Households
- Industry
- Technological/natural risks
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How does it work?
The EIONET network exists both offline, as a network of organisations, and online as an electronic network (eEIONET). eEIONET links 35 sites in the EU Member States, Acceding and Candidate Countries and topic centres into one collaborative network on the Internet. eEIONET provides extranet management and integration with national and other networks using generic application services for sharing environmental information between national and international agencies and administrations. It is a new platform with an easy and practical user interface for reporting and providing public access to environmental data.
The EEA has recently launched three new services - the first of the so-called Reportnet Services - for its 31 European member countries and other interested parties. They form an integrated set of services for the EIONET community and other institutions wanting to participate in a shared European Environment Information System (EEIS). An example of how it works can be summarised as follows:
- A member country intending to fulfil its reporting obligations (falling under the EEA and other international conventions) can directly consult the Web service ROD - the Reporting Obligations Database. From the homepage the user selects a specific issue such as 'Nature Conservation and Biodiversity loss'. It finds that among others, according to Council Resolution of 2 April 1979 concerning Directive 79/409/EEC on the conservation of wild birds, a National report on derogations needs to be handed in to the European Commission on an annual basis.
- To deliver the National report on derogations, the responsible organisation will make use of CDR - the Central Data Repository. Once completed, the data reports within each country collection are arranged under the relevant reporting obligations or agreements.
- Ultimately, when responsible organisations need to monitor and/or search deliveries available on CDR, they consult CR - the Content Registry, which is a sort of metadata providing several search options.
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Achievements
- The past few years have seen the adoption of a new information architecture for eEIONET. It consists of generic services based on open source and common tools for data management, group collaboration and portal services.
- This led to the new reporting modules, the EIONET portal toolkit and a workflow tool. From these components applications began to be built.
- Services of the network management centre were expanded: from being a closed network, EIONET is increasingly opening up to new partners.
- Reportnet, as part of the eEIONET, is in an ongoing implementation phase as far as contents, upload and update are concerned.
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Who benefits?
Citizens: Easier access to documents and reported data by citizens is one of the priorities of the Environment Policy (see also 'Background information' below). EIONET contributes to raising public awareness and encourages citizens to become more involved and informed on environmental issues so as to pro-actively participate in the protection of the environment. Access to all EEA products is possible through the European Environment Agency's website.
Public Administrations: The Member States directly benefit from increased efficiency when reporting. Policy makers: They are enabled to find easily accessible information, which is accurate and up to date.
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The role of IDA
IDA has co-financed the implementation of this project. IDA's CIRCA tool allows approximately 300 interest groups involved in European Environment Agency/EIONET projects at European and national level to collaborate. Open source tools are built, following IDA Architecture Guidelines where possible, to ensure wide distribution and maintenance.
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Background information
The Global Assessment of the 5th Environment Action Programme (1992-1999), concluded that while progress was being made in cutting pollution levels in some areas, problems remained. The environment would continue to deteriorate unless more progress was made in the implementation of environmental legislation in Member States, there was better integration of environment with the economic and social policies, and stakeholders and citizens took more ownership of efforts to protect the environment.
For this reason, 'Environment 2010: Our Future, Our Choice', the 6th programme (EAP), stresses the need for Member States to implement existing environmental laws more thoroughly.
One of its objectives is tackling climate change, i.e. to stabilise the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a level that will not cause unnatural variations in the earth's climate.
The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that human activity is causing increases in concentrations of greenhouse gases that are the cause of the problem. The key priority for the 6th Programme will be the ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to cut 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 8% by 2008-12. This must be considered as a first step to the long-term target of a 70% cut.
This is only one example of many through which the EEA work and EIONET reporting links to the policy targets provided by the 6th EAP of the European Union. The eEIONET will play an important role in the achievement of the above objective, being the repository of crucial information such as the yearly emission of gases in the EU and neighbouring countries. eEIONET is the main 'instrument' monitoring future developments and achievements.
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Technical information
|
Project start date |
1999 |
|
Project completion date |
2003 |
|
Project status |
Implementation |
|
IDA budget |
1999 € 903,000
2000 € 1,180,000
2001 € 950,000
2002 € 600,000 |
|
Responsible service |
European Environment Agency (EEA) and DG Environment |
|
Project coordinator |
Hans Stielstra
Stefan Jensen |
|
Contact |
idabc@ec.europa.eu |
|
Countries involved |
EU Member States, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, FYR of Macedonia, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, Serbia and Montenegro, and Turkey |
|
Public websites |
http://www.eionet.eu.int/
http://rod.eionet.eu.int/
http://cdr.eionet.eu.int/
http://cr.eionet.eu.int/ |
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Documentation: |
Print
EIONET - Annual Report 2003 (PDF)
