Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project aims to develop at European level a service integrating disparate heterogeneous government databases on inland water. This will make existing distributed environmental data available to users through an intelligent interface acting as a one-stop shop.

Project number	IST-2000-29317
Subject(s)	INFORMATION - COMPUTER SCIENCES , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID
Acronym	EDEN IW
Geographical coverage	Italy, Greece, France, Denmark, United Kingdom
Budget (in €)	4839733
Programme	FP5 IST
Web site	http://www.eden-iw.org
Objectives	Objectives: The objectives of the Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project is to make existing distributed environmental data available to users through an intelligent interface acting as a one-stop shop, where users will be able to address their needs for Inland Water data through one common interface, independent of: - physical or logical location of the databases; - the database languages used; - the specific nomenclature used in a specific database; - users knowing which database or databases contain the relevant information. This is achieved by a sophisticated set of open software agents that advertise, broker, and exchange the data requested by the user. Data is harmonised while maintaining autonomy of the data custodians, as databases are integrated into an efficient tool for decision support by a shared knowledge base. The technology provides uniform access to disparate information resource without imposing additional requirements. The prototype produced in this project can contribute to creating a new standard for environmental data exchange that eases environmental reporting and planning. Work description: The research project has 5 main trusts: 1. Advanced technological research in order to enhance the functionality of the open source intelligent multi-agent software (Distributed Semantic Agents); 2. Research and develop a specific application on Inland Water data e.g. connect a number of relevant data bases to the system; 3. Enrich the possibilities for environmental management by adding new types of intelligent software agents, capable of providing decision makers with decision support and knowledge needed to manage complex environmental management situation related to inland water; 4. Assure efficient and effective semantic management, by developing a relevant, specific Inland Water ontology and specific Inland Water glossaries, supported by two external reference multilingual thesauri, allowing easy extension to multi-language situations; 5. Serving the user community, which currently consist of European Environment Agency, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Defence, US Department of Energy, the Italian Ministry for the Environment and the European Topic Centre for Inland Water. The perspectives and the visions of this project are that a user (policy maker), will be able to get rapid answers to environmental questions on inland waters, without any knowledge about the data sources might be available, with coverage ranging from global to continental, from national to local, following political boundaries, or catchments areas as required. In principle a large number of inland water databases in the world could be linked together with this technology, providing a world wide inland water database.
Results	Milestones: - Delivery of an inland Water open source application with informatics support consisting of databases, thesaurus, ontology and decision support giving a value-added environmental information service which provide easy access to currently difficult accessible data; - Completion of a decision support system on top of the tool provides easy access for non-expert users and decision makers. - Inland water glossary with ontology - Inland water data model
Period	[01/07/2001 - 30/06/2004]

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