3. Data availability

3.1 Methodological considerations

The two main sources of information we have used to assess data availability in European river basins are:

• Article 5 reports. As an obligatory part of the WFD implementation EC member states have recently reported on the status of water bodies. These reports contain some information on data availability and modelling activities. These reports are available on the CIRCA website: http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/env/wfd/library?l=/framework_directive/implement ation_documents_1/wfd_reports/member_states&vm=detailed&sb=Title).
• The HarmoniRiB River Basin Network. The HarmoniRiB EU FP5 RTD project collected data from eight representative river basins across Europe. The data availability and the actually collected data are described in reports available on the project website (http://workplace.wur.nl/harmonirib).

Several other EU funded research projects have collected river basin data that could potentially also be used to analyse data availability. This is for instance the case for several of the other CatchMod projects such as Euroharp (www.euroharp.org). One problem that makes use of information from these projects difficult is that they only collected data according to the needs of the research project, and this is only some of the available data. This implies that the water managers in practise have more data at their disposal than the data collected in the respective research projects. This would provide a biased view of data availability. We have therefore focused on the HarmoniRiB data that are more complete in this respect and made an additional effort to check that the information shown in the present report provides a correct picture of the full amount of data available to the water managers in these eight basins.

As mentioned earlier in this report WISE – the Water Information System for Europe – is under development by EC etc. to substitute a number of databases on environmental data on a European scale. This web site will, once filled with data, allow users to browse all information and data collected during Water Framework Directive implementation in Europe. A cartographic (map view) interface enables users to zoom into any specific area in Europe to get information on the status of specific water bodies. Here it will also be possible to find additional information, such as reports from Pilot River Basins and guidance documents covering large parts of water management. The aim is to develop a water information system with publicly accessible information relevant for water management on a European scale. We have not analysed the WISE data as an indicator of the data availability, because the data availability in the river basins are in all cases significantly larger than what is reported to the WISE database, either in terms of the amount of stations and/or the temporal resolution of the data, as WISE focuses on data collected to document compliance with the WFD.

3.2 Information from WFD Article 5 reports (Basis Analysis)

EC member states have recently reported on the status of the water bodies – the so-called Article 5 reports (see link above). These reports are rather heterogeneous with respect to style and length. A quick survey of some of the country reports available in English (Cyprus, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Malta and Romania) show that most of the reports emphasise the following with respect to data availability:

• Data are still insufficient for a proper characterisation of the status of many water bodies; most often in terms of biological and ecological data on surface waters but also priority and hazardous substances as well as surveys of contributions of nutrients from diffuse pollution, both in surface water and groundwater, are mentioned.
• There is a need for further data collection to fulfil the WFD requirements and this will be done in the coming years.
• Much of the characterisation and classification has been carried out based on expert knowledge

Most Article 5 reports do not directly address the current data availability and accessibility in their reports and most do not address the need for modelling nor the question to which extent the existing data are sufficient for modelling purposes. However, some reports mention modelling projects already carried out, which has helped in the characterisation etc. of water bodies and a few mentions modelling as a possible tool to overcome some of the future challenges and gaps in data etc.

It appears from these reports that the national authorities responsible for WFD implementation in many cases feel that the existing data are not sufficient for all the WFD requirements, and that they therefore foresee the need to improve the data collection during the coming years. The language in these reports is, however, not very rigorous, and they do not explicitly address the need of data for modelling. The conclusion we can draw should therefore be taken with some reservations.

At this early stage of the WFD implementation it is quite understandable that member states are cautious regarding data adequacy. Partly, because it is impossible at this first WFD iteration to know what the optimal data amount is to design the programme of measures that will be decided in a participatory decision process and to efficiently monitor the effects its implementation. And partly, because data adequacy is not something static. External pressures are dynamic, and often increasing, and therefore the data needs will also often increase correspondingly.

3.3 HarmoniRiB River Basin Network

Within the EU funded HarmoniRiB project WFD relevant data from a network of eight river basins throughout Europe have been collected and analysed (Refsgaard et al., 2005b, 2006). These basins have been selected to ensure a good coverage across Europe in terms of eco-regions, types of water problems, socio-economic conflicts and amount and quality of existing data. In addition, two of the river basins (Odense and Jucar) are also included in the Pilot River Basin Network, where the EC guidance documents have been tested. The location and characteristics of the eight basins are shown in Figure 4 and Table 2. Brief descriptions of each of the basins and their respective water resources problems together with a brief description of the data availability and accessibility are provided in the Appendix. It should be noted that the basins are not research basins, and that the types of problems vary significantly from predominantly agriculturally related water quality in northern Europe to water shortage in southern Europe and to some basins experiencing severe floods.

The data availability may be characterised as representative for its region and type of water management problems with some minor reservations. First of all, these basins were selected for the research project amongst others because the basin organisations were considered to be relatively resourceful as compared to similar organisations in their respective countries/regions. Secondly one should be somewhat cautious to claim representativeness from such a small sample.

Figure 4 Location of the HarmoniRiB network of representative river basins

Table 2 Key characteristics of the HarmoniRiB network of representative river basins

It is not feasible and it is outside the scope of this synthesis report to list all the data that are available for the selected river basins. Instead some variables/data types have been selected. They serve as indicators of data availability and may not be fully representative in all cases.

A summary of the data availability is given in Table 3. It appears from Table 3 that there are large differences in the amount of data in the various basins. It is also clear that the data collection has been tailored to the water resources problems in the basins. For instance the river basins with the largest drought/water shortage problems (Geropotamou-GR, Candelaro-IT and Jucar-ES) are in the top of data coverage with respect to meteorological data. On the other hand, the amount of surface water quality data is much higher in countries like Germany, Netherlands and Denmark where eutrophication is a key WFD problem compared to the Mediterranean basins in Greece, Southern Italy and Spain, where non-sustainable groundwater abstractions is the key problem. Similarly, much more data on groundwater quality exist in the Danish river basin, where groundwater quality is the key problem related to drinking water problem, than in other countries where this is not so major an issue.

Examples of the models that have been supported by the available data are given in Table 4. By comparing these tables with Table 3 it appears that modelling has been carried out in domains with perceived water resources problems. Altogether this gives, not surprisingly, a clear correlation between (a) water resources problem domains; (b) data availability; and (c) previous modelling studies.

By combining the information on data availability for indicator variables (Table 3) with the information on previous modelling activities in the respective river basins (Table 4) we have prepared Table 5 showing an indication of the suitability of the existing data for various levels of model complexity and model applicability. There is an element of subjective assessments in this. However, as the data availability and the past modelling studies as previously noted are closely correlated, we believe that the picture depicted by Table 5 is a reasonable reflection of the real differences between the river basins.

3.4 Discussion and conclusions regarding data availability in river basins

The analyses of the Article 5 reports and the HarmoniRiB basins lead to two conclusions with some apparent differences. On the one hand, it appeared from the Article 5 reports that data availability in many cases may not be sufficient for the entire WFD implementation. On the other hand, we concluded that the data availability in the HarmoniRiB basins was sufficient for some level of modelling.

An interesting question is then if this level of model complexity/applicability indicated in Table 5 is sufficient for WFD implementation. This cannot be answered directly. On one hand it appears from comparison of Table 5 and river basin descriptions in the Appendix that there is a high degree of correlation between the domains of water resources problems and the number of stars in Table 5 suggesting that the data availability may be sufficient for the first iteration of the WFD implementation. However, on the other hand it is not possible at this early stage of the WFD process to tell exactly what the requirements to accuracy of model predictions are. This will depend on the economic assessments of the programme of measures and, not least, on the stakeholder views as they appear through the public participation process.

The message from the Article 5 reports, namely that the data in many cases may not be sufficient for all aspects of the coming WFD implementation, therefore suggests that the level of modelling required to support the WFD implementation will be somewhat higher than what can be performed with the present data availability. The important point here is that the requirements to data from a socio-economic (water management) point of view is consistent with the data requirement to modelling, simply because it is the socio-economic requirements that determine what kind of modelling should be performed.

Table 3 Data availability for selected data types in the eight HarmoniRiB river basins

Table 4 Examples of models supported by data from the eight HarmoniRiB river basins

Table 5 Data suitability to support model studies at varying complexity in the eight HarmoniRiB river basins

Level of model complexity/application:

* Simple - screening
** Intermediate - planning
*** Comprehensive - design
**** Research – process studies