Information development and analysis

With the growth of the body of EU legislation, especially since the 1990s, it soon became clear that collecting paper reports as a way to justify the implementation of European law was no longer sufficient, and that structured and harmonised data collection was the only way to guarantee comparability across different national situations.

For instance, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) sets environmental targets for Member States, as well as requiring them to base their policies on environmental knowledge and to report on progress through monitoring programmes, feeding into the Water Information System for Europe (WISE).

Demand for environmental data development and analysis continues to grow, especially because of the exponential increase in data and their potential reuse through online tools. Data development and analysis activities play a key role in building an understanding of the environment and raising awareness among stakeholders. In fact, these activities are a central part of every organisation’s strategy.

Once data are properly managed within an information system, they can then be analysed – as long as the organisation in question employs the best practices and specific information technologies that OiEau has been developing since its inception. It is on this basis that OiEau develops and produces monitoring reports, summaries, data visualisations and document management solutions, as well as portals and websites more generally. They are specifically designed to support knowledge and decision-making, allowing organisations to efficiently use all available information online, to browse through this information in order to update and deepen their knowledge, and to identify major trends and emerging topics. They cater to the requirements of large private companies, as well as of public bodies at the level of cities, basins, transboundary basins and countries, drawing on OiEau’s expertise in the underlying technical and regulatory framework.