Digitalization is widely perceived as a key enabler for smart water management and operational performance.

On November 13th, a workshop hosted by Water4All partners examined the perspectives of digitalization and data sharing. Furthermore, the workshop gave a first outline on how data sharing within Water4All is anticipated to take place. Finally, the workshop discussed how Water4All data sharing could interact with external organizations, hereby striving to identify data management and governance elements required to facilitate European Water Data Sharing.

This workshop is an activity within the pillar C on "Science - Policy - End-users Interface". Its global aim is to develop open science & open access to project outputs, connected observatories and research infrastructures.

Presentation and overview of the data management, and digitalization 

Henrik Dissing, Danish Environmental Portal, introduced the workshop with an overview of how data and data management constitute core elements of a value chain which also includes transformative aspects of digital tools and, eventually, usage of digital solutions for data-driven end-user value creation in terms of more efficient, more precise and faster operations and water management.

Data sharing is particularly relevant in cross-cutting situations, being cross-sector, across administrative boundaries or between stakeholders with different roles, e.g. when aiming for data-driven solutions to integrated urban water management or integrated river catchment management. Particularly when embarking on cross-cutting and data-driven approaches, this often conflicts with existing administrative structures or the lack of clear operational roles for data management, thus calling for governance perspectives to be considered.

How to develop data sharing in the water sector

Sylvain Grellet, BRGM – French Geological Survey, presented the approach to the technical side of data sharing i.e. how to actually build the prototype for data sharing. At first, data sharing within a number of selected use cases – quantitative surface water and groundwater data, altogether the foundation for creating hydrological models – will be tested using data of core members but also allowing for data provided by other interested parties of Water4All. As already outlined in the Water4All Data Management Plan version 1.0, the so-called FAIR-principles (see link to learn more), which require a focus on harmonizing approaches to data management and especially how to ensure interoperability of water sector data, will be at the core of building the prototype. 

Following these two introductory presentations, three inspiring cases showcasing usage of water data and advanced digital tools were presented.

Three showcases for water data

1. Marie Pettenati, BRGM (FRA), described the data usage and application of advanced, digital models of the French Groundwater System. Based on real-time monitoring at 1.700 French Groundwater Monitoring Stations, the system allows the forecasting of groundwater levels (whether at high or low levels).

2. Juan Luis Sobreira Seoane, ITG (ESP), presented Data Sharing Challenge on Practice: How to deal with Water Management Decision Support Systems at Urban Scale. At an urban scale, integrating water data with urban planning data currently implies a number of challenges, both data access across public institutions and interoperability of data.

3. Maarten van Loo, VITO (BEL), talked about the overall approach to digitalization in Flandern, as well as specific projects in the water sector, especially the WaterProof initiative, which strives to form a Flamish Water Data Space. The presentation gave a detailed insight on how this multi-stakeholder data sharing will be organized.

With dedicated contributions from the workshop participants, the workshop discussed important elements addressing several topics, ranging from

• defining the use-cases to be tested as part of building the prototype,

• how Water4All stakeholders could take part; dialogue with external parties e.g. EEA, AquaInfra, Stars4Water; and, not least,

• how to balance access to data, ownership of data and national regulatory frameworks; altogether within the framework of the Open Data Open Science Policy Paper,

Looking across Water4All, the results of this workshop will be integrated with the Science-Policy Interface activities (Pillar C), Living Labs (Pillar D) and the SRIA strategic seminar (Pillar A).