Improved access to EEA Information on the Web

Improved access to EEA Information on the Web

The European Environment Agency (EEA) launches a completely new web-site today. Almost 2 years after the EEA’s first appearance on the World Wide Web, the web-site has been completely restructured and restyled. Due to the growing number of documents the EEA has produced, a new structure for the site was required to improve the navigation possibilities. Its structure and content allows for a whole range of uses: from keeping up-to-date on environmental news and events, finding out more about the role of the EEA, examining a specific report in detail, or simply as a convenient link to other environment-related sites.

The web-site can be found at http://www.eea.europa.eu

The EEA web-site is structured in the following sections:

Documents: All the documents on the site are found here: the EEA newsletters, press releases and brochures; full text or abstracts from major reports including the ‘Three-yearly Reports’ and the current Annual Work Programme, plus monographs, articles and papers

New: Environmental news stories, most recent EEA projects and other new additions to the web-site.

Events: The EEA maintains a database of forthcoming events within the environmental domain which can be accessed from this page. Everybody is welcome to suggest additional events to be included in this database.

About EEA: Information about the EEA itself: how it came into being, its aims and objectives, organisation, geographical scope and membership, and on a more personal note, information about its staff members and opportunities within the Agency

Projects: Overviews of EEA projects with relevant documents, findings, current status etc. with a special focus on the preparation for the next ‘State of the European environment report’

Links: The EEA is not the only provider of environmental information on the Internet. In order to fulfil its role as ‘one-stop-shop’ for environmental information, the EEA will try as much as possible to provide links to other environmental organisations. If the EEA does not hold information itself, it tells you where the information most likely can be found

Databases: Some selected databases are already available and more will gradually be made accessible on-line for collaborating EIONET institutions and general users. They cover: Air Emissions, Air Quality, Catalogue of Data Sources, Inland Waters, Land Cover and Nature Conservation.

Search/Index: Enables you to locate immediately a particular topic, report or event

Unique for the web-site is the large number of documents in several languages. A special section is created to give easy access to documents in many European languages. Some of these documents don’t even exist in printed versions.

The opening of the new web-site coincides together with the launch of the EIONET (European Environment Information and Observation Network) Intranet. This Intranet connects the EEA’s National Focal Points in 15 EU member countries in a collaborative network

Located in the heart of Copenhagen, the EEA is the environmental information reference centre of the European Union. Its mission is to monitor the state and trends of the environment in Europe and support the European Union and member countries in improving their environmental policy and its implementation. EEA Executive Director Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán: "Making accessible and exposing the best available environmental information is paramount: it will improve the decision making and the public participation process. It will certainly lead to a constructive pressure from the citizens to reduce the stress factors in the environment. It also helps to improve the quality of information itself."

For more information, contact the webmasters Florus both and Bert Jansen, or webmaster@eea.europa.eu