Increasingly through the past years and more so in 2024, we have been involved in developing and running the data flows of Reportnet 3.
Branded as "the next generation for e-Reporting environmental and climate data", Reportnet 3 is the e-reporting platform for reporting data from national institutions, academic institutions, and non-governmental organisations across Europe to the Eionet and European Environment Agency (EEA). Designed with strategic goals in mind and based on the EU environmental acquis, it provides flexible components: reporting obligations database, which defines what data to be reported; dataset schemas, which explain how the data should be structured; data upload channel, which accepts data in various formats including machine-to-machine connection to source (national) databases via API; and data validation engine, which runs the QC specifications over delivered data to automatically determine their quality and potentially request improvements.
Mandated to collect, quality-control, organise, and make the data available in interpreted format, our experts take part in several water-related data flows.
For the Bathing Water Directive data flow, we started applying Reportnet 3 by developing the relevant data flow in the period 2019-2022. It is one of the core Eionet data flows used to comply with the legal requirements of the Directive, which means it is mandatory to be used by all Member States of the EU. In the first stage, we defined the new data model and the new quality assessment protocol. This was followed by the development of QC specifications, which automatically check the quality of delivered data based on logical rules; e.g., if a bathing water is officially listed, it must also have a corresponding season and monitoring results reported. Meanwhile, we have been improving the quality of the data reported in the past, subject to different data collection standards and legal interpretations; as a result, various qualities of national data sets had to be standardised. In 2024, we reached the level where the data flow is well automated, clearly understood by virtually all reporting countries, and able to support future automation of bathing water quality classification.
For the Marine Strategy Framework Directive data flow, we were administering the data flow that runs on six-year cycles, subject to third reporting in 2024.
For the recast Drinking Water Directive data flow, we developed the dataset schema for the spatial data: water supply zones. These have to fit the wider standards of the spatial data reporting in the EU (e.g., INSPIRE Directive), as well as be interoperable with other spatial data of the WISE and EEA. In effect, we can directly compare a water supply zone with water protection areas, waste-water treatment discharge points, nearby water bodies and their pressures, etc. The data flow has been open for reporting for the first time in 2024.
The Marine Litter Watch data flow is a continuation of the 2013 initiative, when the EEA established the mobile and web app for reporting beach litter by the European citizens and non-governmental organisations. Since then, the focus has changed towards the organisations that conduct series of citizen events to collect litter and data, to report the latter in consolidated format. A new Reportnet 3 data flow, which we developed over past two years, now allows for straightforward reporting of data in bulk, including the automatic quality control that returns explanations of data quality issues to reporters in real time.