EEA INFORAC meeting on infrastructure and data management, Rome, 6-8 February 2017
In the framework of the EU-funded European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) - ENI SEIS II South Support Mechanism, EEA visited the Information and Communication Regional Activity Centre (InfoRAC) of UN environment Mediterranean Action Plan in Rome, 6-8 February 2017.
InfoRAC, hosted by the Italian Environmental Agency (ISPRA) aims to contribute to collecting and sharing information, raising public awareness and participation and enhancing decision-making processes at the regional, national and local levels. In this context, the mission of INFO-RAC is to provide adequate information and communication services and infrastructure technologies to Contracting Parties to implement Article 12 on public participation and Article 26 of the Barcelona Convention on reporting, as well as several articles related to reporting requirements under the different Protocols, thus strengthening MAP information management and communication capabilities.
As part of its effort to ensure availability of coherent and scientifically sound environmental knowledge and to progressively move towards a Shared Environmental Information System, InfoRac is jointly implementing with EEA the data management and infrastructure activities of the ENI SEIS II South Support Mechanism (Work package 4).
This first meeting aimed to take stock of the infrastructure development situation, list points to be addressed and identify working methods (including resources, roles in the team, sharing platform documents). The team looked more specifically at:
- INFO MAP infrastructure in view of facilitating integration of H2020 data flows
- Analyse meta data model under development to support Ecosystem approach (ECAP) implementation
- Audit MedPol Information System to be run against the data model and the INFO MAP architecture
- Explore other reporting tools related to the Barcelona Convention (NBB, PRTR, ECAP)
- Elaborate detailed work plan for implementation of the ENI SEIS II Work Package 4
- Setting-up procedures for linking INFO MAP with ENI SEIS II website (in a view of implementing data visualization tools)
