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FRom one conTinenT To anoTHeR
EUROPE
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The News N° 24
The Environment Directorate-General
(ENV.DG)
of the European Commission initia-
ted an effort to modernize the information sys-
tem on the implementation of Water-related
Directives, that starts with the Urban Waste
Water Treatment Directive and will gradually
extend to the Directives on Drinking Water
and on Bathing Waters.
This new approach introduces the concept of
SIIF (Structured Implementation and
Information Framework)
that aims to pass,
in a few years, from an approach of assessing
past actions to providing information of the
year as soon as it becomes available on a rele-
vant scale.
This approach should allow better planning of
actions to be taken by better targeting current
problems.
For having support in this work, the ENV.DG
launched an invitation to tender which was
won by
IOWater,
together with
the Aus-
trian Environment Agency,
for a period of
13 months.
This work started with the assessment of exis-
ting national and European information sys-
tems and of their strengths and weaknesses.
Based on these findings, the future system
was globally defined regarding both its the-
matic component and the recommended
information system.
A concept note describing the new reporting,
information and assessment system was writ-
ten and presented to the Member States at a
workshop on 24 October 2013.
The results of this workshop allowed adjus-
ting the proposal according to the feedbacks
from the Member States which led to a
concept note finalized for February 2014.
A road map and detailed work program for
EEA will be drafted from this note, identifying
the key steps and actions necessary to move
from the current system to the SIIF for the
Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.
The experience gained in this project will then
define the approach for the other Directives in
the water sector.
4
DGEnvironment
The consortium of the European
Water-
Diss2.0
project organized, on 2 and 3 Decem-
ber 2013 in Barcelona, its final conference
entitled
”Definition of the best strategies
to transfer research: exchange of Euro-
peans ideas, methods and tools”.
In the water sector, sharing research results bet-
ween researchers and users is a slow and
incomplete process: the estimated time for
transferring research, before integration into
public policy, production of new products or
services, is often more than 10 years.
During the past three years, the
WaterDiss2.0
project partners worked with a large number of
beneficiaries of EU funding.
They defined and tested new strategies
to transfer water research to end users.
The final conference of Barcelona presented the
whole work and obtained results through ope-
rational and practical examples.
The conference addressed the following main
questions:
l
Why the transfer time of water research is
currently more than 10 years?
l
Why is it so important to develop specific
and adaptive strategies for dissemination?
l
What are the responsibilities and respective
roles of water managers, scientists and sta-
keholders in this transfer?
l
Are transfer tools and methods likely to sti-
mulate innovation?
l
What are the actions to be taken by donors
to optimize the quick use of research results
on water?
More information:
4
WaterDiss
Better strategies to transfer research results
in Europe
WaterDiss
Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive
A modern European information system
WaterDiss2.0 final workshop - Working group
facilitated by G. Nion (IOWater) and J. Brils (DELTARES)
