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As a joint European project, Ozone Web reflects the international

character of air pollution. Air pollutants are emitted in one place but

may have an impact in another many hundreds of kilometres away.

The website demonstrates how an international institution can create

partnerships with member countries to provide near-real-time infor-

mation on the environment to serve and empower citizens.

Functionality of the web tool includes:

• European status (the situation in Europe) including live status

data, recent historic status, stations and their location in Europe

• Advanced mapping tool

• Interpolated maps

• Comparison and trends

• Supporting texts.

In the coming years, the project plans to expand data coverage to

other pollutants such as particulate matter (PM).

These online services are seen as the first steps toward a seamless

Internet-based pan-European information system. The system is

expected to be interoperable with standards set by the European

Directive on Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

(INSPIRE),

as well as ISO and OGC.

Outlook – toward a shared environmental information system

The European capacity to access and manage the wide range of infor-

mation and services required for environmental management is still

very fragmented, suffering from great heterogeneity in terms of orga-

nization, system architecture, technical implementation, data

structure and data access policy. The challenge is to interconnect the

many information sources and to build an integrated and dynamic

information area for environmental management.

In dialogue with member states, the European Community has

recently agreed upon the concept of a SEIS for Europe. The scope of

SEIS is to establish an integrated and sustained environmental infor-

mation system to improve the sharing of data within Europe and

beyond. Such an information system should lead to improvement,

both in the quality of environmental data and information, and in

its management, use and dissemination. The benefits of such a shared

information system are compelling and have already been recognized

by regional and international organizations beyond the EU, such as

UNEP/MAP’s proposal to establish a shared environmental informa-

tion system for the Mediterranean region.

SEIS will be built incrementally upon the information and systems

that already exist in the EU member states and at the European level.

The concept of SEIS is based on similar principles as those which

are applied in the EU Directive for spatial information in Europe

(INSPIRE):

• Information should be managed as closely as possible to its source

• Information is provided once and shared with others for many

purposes

• Information should be accessible to enable clients to make

comparisons at the appropriate geographical scale (e.g. countries,

cities, catchment areas)

• Information should be made available to the public after due

consideration of the appropriate level of aggregation, given possi-

ble confidentiality constraints, and at national level in the national

language(s).

SEIS will be based on a distributed or decentralized network of public

information providers for sharing environmental data and informa-

tion. This concept reflects, on the one hand, Europe’s

commitment to open society and governance and, on

the other hand, the possibilities offered by today’s infor-

mation and communication technology.

Links to GEOSS – toward a global monitoring system

The mission of EEA is closely aligned with the GEOSS

vision “to realize a future wherein decisions and actions

for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordi-

nated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations

and information.”

In this context, EEA sees strong connections between

specific EEA projects, the European initiative on a shared

environmental information system and the GEOSS process.

The two web applications discussed above are examples of

early achievements in support of the GEOSS SBAs:

• The EEA near-real-time ozone website contributes to

“understanding environmental factors affecting

human health and well-being”

• EEA water information systems for Europe contribute

to “improving water resource management through

better understanding of the water cycle.”

In the coming years Europe’s monitoring capacities and

infrastructure will be further strengthened by the Global

Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES)

programme. This programme aims to integrate satellite

and ground-based monitoring data into operational

services to provide geo-spatial information for policy

and decision makers.

GMES is anticipated to be the

main EU contribution to GEOSS. Four services are

currently in scope, covering ‘atmosphere’, ‘emergency

response’, ‘land monitoring’ and ‘marine’ services, and

are expected to be available from 2008 onward.

The ongoing activities of EEA, its network EIONET

and other EU institutions on improving European envi-

ronmental data flows and GMES will support GEOSS

goals to achieve significant progress in the nine SBAs of

the ten-year implementation plan.

SEIS – Shared Environmental Information System for Europe

Potential 800,000

web pages

Potential 408,000

web pages

Potential 362,000

web pages

One European

website

France

Germany

EEA

web services

for member states

The concept of SEIS is a distributed network of information

providers that enables the sharing of environmental data and

information. Members (here e.g. France, Germany, and UK)

deliver information and profit from tools and services of pan-

European web services

Source: EEA, 2007

GEOSS C

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