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Since the European Commission’s Communication on SEIS in 2008, numerous efforts have been made to create a SEIS and implement its principles and pillars throughout Europe and even beyond. During this time, EEA has been a leading proponent of SEIS, and has increasingly applied SEIS to its own work. EEA also encourages external organisations, networks and processes to do the same, and manages or participates in on-going European and global initiatives contributing to the implementation of SEIS. Here are some examples:
SEIS is not only about making information available for human consumption, it is also about making the data available for machine-to-machine communication via standard APIs (application programming interfaces) and open data formats. Implementing and supporting SEIS-friendly technology is one of the core activities of the Agency.
SEIS-friendly technology allows several organisations to automatically interconnect, exchange data and stay synchronised in a effective way. Therefore removing inefficiency often created by cumbersome and repetitive manual data exchange steps.
For these reasons the Agency main portal has been extended with semantic web technology also known as Linked Data 1). The technology is open and standardised by the W3C consortium, the leading organisation behind most open standards that makes what today we call the Web. The same technology is widely used to implement SEIS within Eionet and Reportnet.
The Linked Data technology allows any external system to connect to our servers and extract any data / information in a systematic way.
Basically, everything you see on our EEA's website is harvestable via external systems and linked data spiders, so the data and information can be easily re-used, integrated and re-distributed by to a wider network of users. As a practical example, organisations are now able to easily exchange their catalogues of datasets creating more complete federated dataset catalogues, also knows as Open Data Catalogues. The technology makes it effortless for the Agency to contribute to the European Commission Open Data Portal.
1) The term Linked Data was coined by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Web) in his Linked Data Web architecture note from 2006. The term refers to a style of publishing and interlinking structured data on the Web. Read more on Linked Data at http://linkeddata.org/ and http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/data
The European Copernicus programme, previously known as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is an EU-wide flagship programme that aims to support policymakers, business and citizens with improved environmental information. Copernicus integrates satellite and in-situ data with modelling to provide user-focused information services. ‘In-situ data’ are all data from sources other than Earth observation satellites (e.g. ground-based, air-borne, and ship/buoy-based observations and measurements).
EEA coordinates the GMES/Copernicus in-situ component through the GMES/Copernicus In-Situ Coordination (GISC) project. GISC aims at linking data providers and service providers using the principles of SEIS and INSPIRE. GISC is proposing sustainable mechanisms for in-situ data delivery/access, based on existing information capacities (e.g. national systems, European networks). The ultimate goal is to build up an Initial Framework (IF) that comprises tools and methods necessary for an efficient and sustainable interface between in-situ data providers and the GMES services. GISC’s role is to effectively manage this interface.
EEA has also been appointed as the technical coordinator of the GMES/Copernicus Initial Operations for the Land Monitoring Service (GIO land). Its objective is to provide land cover information to users in the field of environmental and other terrestrial applications. Initial operations of the service focus on four components, two of which are coordinated by EEA -- the pan-European and local components. Initial activities around the pan-European component include providing: a land cover change product between 2006 and 2012, and a land cover product for 2012; and five pan-European high-resolution layers for artificial surfaces, forest areas, agricultural areas, wetlands, and water bodies. Eionet countries are encouraged to participate in GIO Land pan-European activities.
The EU directive ‘INSPIRE’ (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe) aims to benefit European public authorities (and others) by making available relevant, harmonised and quality geographic information that support policies and activities impacting the environment. It requires EU Members States to provide 34 different spatial data themes through a network of ‘services’. INSPIRE also requires the adoption of ‘Implementing Rules’ which set out how the system will operate. EEA has been continuously involved with INSPIRE since its preparatory phase.
SEIS plays a crucial role in the EEA’s collection of environmental information from Eionet. Eionet includes some 900 experts from over 300 governmental organizations in 38 European countries. Its ‘Reportnet’ infrastructure, which integrates different web services, is used by countries for reporting specific environmental datasets to the EEA. More recently, it began hosting some of the EC's requirements for environmental reporting. One recent success is that Sweden, Norway and Slovenia now use Reportnet for almost all of their European and international reporting requirements (e.g. EU- and UN-related).
Since 2007, EEA has conducted some 50 ‘SEIS Country Visits’ to its member and cooperating countries, and to its European neighbours. The visits aim to explain SEIS and its benefits, encourage implementation and identify existing SEIS-compliant activities at the national or regional level. Some conclusions to date are:
Through the ENPI-SEIS project, which began in 2011, EEA country visits to the European Neighbourhood (ENP) included Algeria, Armenia, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Moldova, Belarus, Lebanon, Tunisia, Russian Federation and Ukraine. Follow-up workshops are now being held at EEA. The project aims to build up cooperation and discuss national priorities and needs. The SEIS ‘Cookbook’, a guide for implementing SEIS for national authorities, is now available.
A major EEA achievement for SEIS revolved around the seventh Environment for Europe Ministerial Conferenceheld in Astana, Kazakhstan in September, organized by UNECE. For the conference, EEA produced the report Europe’s Environment – An Assessment of Assessments (link). It provided a comprehensive overview of available sources of environmental information across the pan-European region and was developed using SEIS principles. The assessment analyses more than 1,000 environmental assessment reports that were identified and recorded in a dedicated virtual library, with the support of experts across 53 UNECE countries and international organisations. The two thematic areas covered by the assessment and conference are: water and related ecosystems and green economy.
The report also documents the benefits of a SEIS-based ‘regular reporting process’ for environmental assessment to streamline and improve existing information systems and processes. In response, through the Astana Ministerial Declaration, Ministers agreed to establish such a process and to develop SEIS across the region. This will serve multiple policy processes, including multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and include capacity-building of countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and South-Eastern Europe to monitor and assess their environment. EEA (and its partners) were invited by Ministers to develop an outline for how these actions could be performed. EEA also hosted a side event which reinforced the role of SEIS as a key initiative in supporting the path to Rio+20, the global UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio in June 2012.
EEA continuously produces new web-based map viewers and applications for various ‘environmental thematic information services’, using the latest information and communication technologies (ICTs). Some are developed in response to requests from DG Environment. Eye on Earth (link), which stores many thematic datasets from many different themes, is often used to focus on one theme and to present and assess how that theme interacts with other themes (e.g. a focus on water will also show how it is affected by land use). Examples include:
A recent EEA success story with SEIS was the completion of the first ‘SENSE project’. SENSE established an automated process where interested countries report online their state of environment (SoE) information from national websites to the EEA’s SOER (European environment state and outlook 2010 report) web pages for ‘Country assessments’. Phase 2 of the SENSE project, beginning in 2012, will focus on the exchange of indicators between countries and EEA as well as among themselves.
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is a global partnership which includes the European Commission and EU Member States. One of its main tasks is to coordinate efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
GEOSS links existing and planned observing systems around the world and supports the development of new systems where gaps currently exist. It promotes international coordination, capacity building and common technical standards so that data from many different sources can be used by decision makers, planners and emergency managers. The EEA is involved in GEO and GEOSS as a participating organisation and is active in numerous areas of the work plan including in relation to EU datasets, reference data, use of GEO and GEOSS, outreach, global land validation as well as in-situ data sharing.
The EEA data policy is aligned with GEO and GEOSS data sharing principles and as such, the EEA also contributes to the GEOSS Data Collection of Open Resources for Everyone (CORE).
For references, please go to https://eea.europa.eu./about-us/what-archived/seis-initiatives/seis-initiatives or scan the QR code.
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