SPI-Water:

The project "Science-Policy Interfacing in support of the Water Framework Directive implementation" (project acronym: SPI-Water), has been funded by the European Community (contract no: SPI - CT - 2006 - 044357. The project started 1 November 2006 for a duration of 2 years. The project consortium consisted of 16 partners, and has been coordinated by HydroScan ( Belgium). Other partners were QualityConsult (Italy), RIZA (Netherlands), MENBO (Spain), Environment Agency of England and Wales (United Kingdom), XPRO Consulting (Cyprus), Evrard Consultancy (Belgium), National Technical University of Athens (Greece), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (Germany), Office International de l'EAU (France), 2Mpact (Belgium), Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis (Greece), WWF European Policy Programme (Italy), Litani River Authority (Lebanon), and Agence de Bassin Hydraulique du Sebou (Morocco).

SPI-Water has defined a number of concrete actions to bridge policymakers and research scientists in communication by developing and implementing a 'science-policy interface' by focusing on setting up a mechanism to enhance the use of RTD results in support of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The project has organized in 5 interlinking Work Packages (WPs 1-5).

As a first action the existing science-policy links were investigated. EC RTD and EC LIFE projects that were of direct relevance for the implementation of the WFD were identified and analysed. The results of these projects were extracted, 'translated' and synthesised in such a way that it efficiently feeds into the WFD implementation. At the same time, policy issues has been 'translated' to be understood by researchers.

Secondly, an information system, the WISE-RTD Web Portal was developed to cater for an efficient and easy to use tool for dissemination as well as retrieval of RTD results. This Web Portal was tested in four river basins to better tune the 'product' to the needs of WFD stakeholders, being policymakers as well as scientists. This dissemination focused on how to access better and use the RTD results and practical experiences.

As third action, this science-policy interfacing of WFD related topics was extended to non-EU countries Mediterranean taking into account their specific needs. An assessment of recent practices and needs of these countries, together with an in-depth analysis of the operational needs in two Mediterranean pilot river basins, has allowed the preparation of recommendations for an efficient transfer of knowledge.

Task of Quality Consult in the project were twofold.

TAQC-WFD

TBT-IMPACTS