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24.4.09: The workshop posters are now available on the "Downloads" page.12.5.09: The workshop presentations are now available on the "Downloads" page.
This workshop in conjunction with Ocean Business 2009 event (http://www.oceanbusiness.com) gave an overview of the state of the art in environmental risk management tools, sensors aimed at water quality monitoring, and meeting the information need for implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
Workshop objectives
- Identify synergies between ongoing EU projects within environmental risk management
- Identification of users' requirements for applications of environmental information from in situ stations, buoys, aircraft and satellite sensors and modelling predictions for risk management
- Live demonstration of current systems and services
- Round table discussion with prospective users, focusing on contributions meeting the information needs of the Water Framework Directive.
Workshop & European Union Water Framework Directive
The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD -2000) has created a demand among government monitoring agencies and legislative bodies throughout Europe for water quality monitoring systems that are able to monitor reliably a larger number of water quality parameters at regular intervals. This requires trained personnel, reliable instrumentation and in the long run high laboratory costs to achieve the expected monitoring goals. To achieve the WFD-targets, there is a need for development of costeffective instrumentation using advanced technology and shifting to automation to reduce overall analytical costs. The actual growing demand is requesting more and more that water quality is to be measured continuously and in real time. WAter Risk Management in EuRope (WARMER) and InterRisk are two research projects funded by the EC 6th Framework Programme, under the IST-Environmental Risk Management cluster aiming to fill-up some of these existing gaps in automated water quality control and also to fulfil the growing demands in real-time monitoring to minimize effects from accidental spills, which is also a growing problem in many Asian rivers and coastal areas.
Project background
WARMER project (http://www.projectwarmer.eu) is an interdisciplinary project to create an extended system for real-time water quality monitoring, with the main objective to develop a real time water quality monitoring system for Environmental Risk Assessment. The final result is going to be a field deployable monitoring platform that could be effectively used for water risk management, based on a set of modular multiparametric in-situ probes. Field measurement data are linked to remote sensing Earth observations using a Web based management system. The project aims at developing an integrated information system comprised of in situ stations, satellite remote sensing and information integration for risk management in both coastal and inland aquatic environments.
INTERRISK project (http://interrisk.nersc.no) addresses the need for better access to information for risk management in Europe, both in cases of natural hazards and industrial accidents. The overall objective is to develop a pilot system for interoperable GMES monitoring and forecasting services for environmental management in marine and coastal areas. The InterRisk pilot will consist of an open system architecture based on established GIS and web services protocols, and the InterRisk services to be implemented for several European regional seas. The InterRisk pilot system and services will be validated by users responsible for risk management in case of oil spills, harmful algal blooms and other marine pollution events, in Norwegian, UK/Irish, French, German, Polish and Italian coastal waters.