OiEAU ANNUAL REPORT - 2019

Information Systems for the control of wastewater treatment in the European Union Wastewater is a major source of pollution of fresh and marine waters and a risk to health and the environment. For more than 5 years, OiEau has supported the European Commission (EC) in the modernization of the Information and Data Processing System Websites per country, a linked European site and a set of functions for standardizing and automating part of the processing have been established. The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive of 21 May 1991, known as the UWWT Directive, requires Member States of the European Union to ensure that agglomerations are equipped with a system for collecting urban wastewater and that these waters benefit from appropriate treatment before their discharge into the environment. Every two years, these States must provide the EC with data on the sanitation situation. In the event of non-compliance, these data are used in infringement procedures. In 2012, the Commission called for modernizing the water information system to target com- pliance with european water Law and make ac- cess to data and results easier. To meet this challenge, OiEau has developed the UWWTD SIIF (Urban Waste Water Treat- ment Directive - Structured Information and Im- plementation Framework) web tool. It allows processing and disseminating the data collected from Member States in order to show the status of the Directive implementation, for each Euro- pean country, agglomeration and treatment plant. OiEau produced the Country Situation Assess- ment Report and the European synthesis, for the 10th report in 2019. Today, SIIF is mainly used by the EC and the government departments responsible for repor- ting. Tomorrow, it could allow collecting data di- rectly from the operators of wastewater treatment plants, to view other associated data, such as the register of discharge authorizations, and is to be generalized to other Directives. https://uwwtd.eu/ EMWIS: water governance and knowledge sharing in the Mediterranean As part of its Water Agenda (2017), the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) approved the Medi- terranean Water Knowledge Platform, launched jointly by OiEau, the Euro-Mediterranean Infor- mation System on know-how in the Water Sector (EMWIS), the Mediterranean Water Institute, the Mediterranean Network of Basin Organizations and four pilot countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Mo- rocco, Tunisia). The platform responds to the central issue of re- liable data and information availability, through National Water Information Systems (NWIS) which allow joint management of real Mediter- ranean problems such as access to water and sanitation, adaptation to climate change, or ener- gy, food, ecosystems or jobs. In June 2019, the workshop on achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on Water (SDG6) in the Mediterranean concluded that it was ne- cessary to integrate the NWIS into the official production of indicators. « Only political deci- sions based on data can have a long-term impact in the Medi- terranean region. » Mr. ABADI, DG - Water & Environment Division - UfMr. © UpM 19