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Main messages from EU US Joint Consultative Group Meeting February 2008.

Palle Haastrup

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Ecoinformatics Collaboration since 1997

• Common project since 1997

• Meetings once, sometimes twice a year

• Increased political profile

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Introduction

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Key headlines in the implementing arrangement

• Ecoinformatics and informations systems

• Environmental and sustainability indicators

• Formal analysis of uncertainty in environmental models

• Decision support tools

• Environment and health

• Sustainable chemistry and materials

• Nanotechnology uses and impacts

• Environmental technologies

• Emissions from transport and air quality management

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What good is the Implementing arrangement ?

• Political coverage

• Umbrella

• Slot on the agenda of the US/EU Joint Consultancy Group

• Lets use it.

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The Joint Consultative Group meetings

• take place annual

• alternatively in the US and in the EU

• In 2008 the meeting was chaired by

• the US State Department (Deputy Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Miotke)

• DG RTD (Director (D) Mary Minch).

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Subgroup on ICT

• future internet,

• deployed infrastructure,

• network embedded systems,

• Ecoinformatics

• Health IT was discussed.

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Remove barriers to “efficient” collaborations

• US and EU will work together to attempt to clear up and solve the known issues,

• Belgian law

• Consortium contract

• Funding across the Atlantic

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Political climate

• Consensus that the world is small, common EU US projects are needed

• “There is only one environment”

• (yes there are local issues specific to an area, but with communalities across the world).

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Use case

• Integrate knowledge and data from completely different fields

• Integrate knowledge from concept systems into indicator construction

• Make a better overview of surface water quality

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Do the following

• Take a concept system

• Take a database

• Make a demo

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First demo with

• Concepts from GEMET

• Data from WISE/Eurowaternet

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Expand concept system

• GEMET

• Water -> Water Quality -> Surface Water Quality (ok)

• Expand: -> Ecological status and Chemical Status -> High, Good, Moderate

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into XMDR?

• Expand again to data elements

• Ecological status measured by BOD or Nitrogen, or Oxygen contents.

• So if we have a database with any data elements as these, we can construct the indicator “Ecological Status”

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• Chemical Status

• Expand to data elements, pH, next to heavy metals, then into…..

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Take waterbase

• Check contents

• 10 years data on yearly average of pH, BOD, Oxygen contents,….

• Position of measurement station

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Demo: Enhance environmental indicators by use of concept systems.

• Take an indicator! High, good, moderate ecological status of surface water.

• Make the link to data. “High quality” when average BOD5 < 2.5 mg/l, “good” when…

• Take another indicator, High, good, moderate chemical status.

• Link pH data: “High” when 6.8 < pH < 7,8

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• Output:

• Map of positions with water quality status indicator.

• Aggregating over river basins, and then over countries/states, then over continents, and over the world

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Expand with all potential observationsBiodiversity data!!

• From observations of species: example fish. If trout was found in a given river at a given time, the ecological status was “Good”.

• Put the points on the map!

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Expand into land use

• What is around the river ?

• Agriculture ?

• Human habitats ?

• Industrial activities ?

• Industrial agriculture ?

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Practical way forward: Make a “micro” demo

• Distribute the water data file from EEA (Palle)• Find a good dataset about fish biodiversity observations

(Joel, Gail, ??)• Expand GEMET with the needed 5-10 concepts (Larry,

Bruce ??)• Get it into XMDR (Bruce ?)• Make the link between the data and the indicator (Palle ?).• Produce one set of output (Resources ??).• Expand into a common project proposal to EU and US