An Information System Supporting WFD Reporting

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines the quality goals for European water bodies until 2027. Water bodies are managed on very different governmental levels in the member states. Due to the federal system, Germany has a complex structure of responsibilities regarding the management and maintenance of water bodies in Europe.

The paper will present a highly integrated information system to support water body management in the context of the WFD. The system was designed and developed for the German federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The objective was to provide a state-wide information platform accessible through an environmental information system (EIS) for all activities related to the water body management, including the maintenance of the water body network itself, managing related information regarding statistics, agriculture and environmental protection, as well as water body quality like chemical and biological status.

This EIS integrates disparate data sources from a large number of individual providers through standardized services. Moreover, the EIS provides a homogenous view on very different data regarding their topic, content, structure and spatial reference and supports all WFD reporting related workflows.