EIONET-SI Portal By Anita Pirc-Velkavrh

Transcription

1 NEWSLETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT NETWORK European Environment Agency N 8 December 2001 EDITORIAL Shaping the Reportnet COUNTRIES EIONET-SI Portal By Anita Pirc-Velkavrh By Stefan Jensen and Hannu Saarenmaa In the previous issue of EIONET News, a new concept called Reportnet was introduced. Earlier in 2001 EEA adopted an updated strategy providing policy relevant information through a shared European Environmental Information System (EEIS), reorganised to implement it, and brought forward an extensive discussion paper on the IT solutions that should underpin Reportnet. In short, Reportnet is a suite of tools implementing the information infrastructure needed for the e-eionet part of EEIS. While the EEIS and Reportnet scope and goals are still under discussion, several e-eionet projects are already producing components that can become the building blocks in this framework. Inside EEA, to reflect the interconnections of the Reportnet vision, people from various areas combine their knowledge about the elements of the information process. A common understanding on the relationship of frameworks, applications, databases and reports is a basis for this understanding. During the process of designing the Reportnet architecture, the monitoring to reporting (MDIAR) chain is being analysed and the various components either with direct or indirect relation to the information infrastructure are being identified and the relationships are being discussed. It is clear that the implementation of the Reportnet infrastructure shall serve the business processes expressed in this chain (Figure 1). Introduction Slovenia as a new Member country of the EEA has decided to render the existing web site ( eu.int/) for the environmental data and information into an EIONET-SI portal. In accordance with the vision of EEA, the EIONET-SI Portal will be the extension of EIONET Portal, which is developed by EEA. EIONET-SI Portal will be made using Zope and the Portal Tool Kit (PTK). The first web site was made with EEA Phare help. It was developed to support country needs. Topic web sites with links to environmental data, information and indicators are featured. The structure was recently reorganised with a new look and bilingual support (Figure 1). Transformation of web site to EIONET-SI portal We started to build the portal from existing web site. Channels will be established with the relevant institutions covering the environmental data, information, DPSIR indicators, etc. There are many reasons for transforming the existing web site to a portal. These include the need to harmonise with the EEA EIONET portal; having the possibility of opening communication (for example voting on different actual themes); easy and the quick updating; simple connections to data bases; simple updating of news and their review; good orientation during portal use, and personalisation of the content. However, there are some differences between the EIONET and EIONET-SI portal such as different colours and multilingual support. Figure 1: Existing EIONET-SI web site Figure 1: The Monitoring to Reporting (MDIAR) chain Continued on page 2 Figure 2: Draft of EIONET-SI portal Continued on page 2

2 EIONET NEWS Editorial (Continued from page 1) At the same time, our National Focal Points also contribute to the discussion. A point addressed by all of them is the issue of required hard- and software on the national level. Cost of software is no longer the point. CIRCA on LINUX allows for a migration from expensive UNIX platforms to standard PCs. Another new issue to be addressed is the normative function that such Reportnet components as the Data Dictionary will have. There are different opinions on whether data definitions should be harmonised throughout the MDIAR chain, affecting national systems, or whether they have to be adopted at the international level first. The key stakeholders identification with the underpinning business processes in EEIS is another element, which will determine its success. In the recent management board seminar the issue was looked at from the point of information system development needed for the determination of sound environmental indicators. The discussion having just started, a very good initial response was received from OECD as well as from WHO on the vision for a shared EEIS. It is clear that EEA will have to demonstrate the value of its approach for EIONET and selected data flows first, and at the same time, work on the organisational relationships to expand the scope. Regarding the Reportnet tools (Figure 2) currently under development in various IDA and EEA projects, major results of the year 2001 development phase can be summarized as follows: - A real achievement is the launch of the new EIONET Directory. This application is fully operational and the built-in mailing lists are already being used for information exchange in EIONET. - The reporting obligations database prototype (WebROD), managing the obligations within Reportnet has been substantially worked on. The famous questions have been taken out as they were found to be unmanageable. The available parameter lists have been streamlined. - Designing a Registry, which harvests metadata from the first EIONET services has been started. First content areas are reports, indicators and the data service. Dublin Core element set which is now the preferred choice for the metadata harmonisation is used throughout all EIONET and EEA services. - While there is a general layout available for the Data Dictionary, it has not been filled yet with data. It is the place where the parameters will be thoroughly described as first step to their harmonisation. We are currently discussing on the priority dataflow areas to start with. - A new generation of Repository is being developed using Zope. It has the potential to replace the current CIRCA Library for uploading reported data sets. This new repository has been written by EEA to the specifications of the Danish NFP development priorities are currently being set. We will see a shift from prototyping software to gradually filling the modules with meaningful data from the current EIONET activities. Faster development cycles are necessary, which has caused us to adopt the spiral model of development. It will allow a more immediate exposure to real world situations, helping us develop the tools that meet the client needs. Figure 2: The Reportnet architecture. While the outer circle mainly describes data flow, the inner circle illustrates metadata relations. EIONET-SI Portal continued from page 1 Other environmental data and info Contact persons CDS News Search EIONET EEA cooperation with EEA and EU ReportNet UNEP Infoterra Networks Products&Services Infoterra Clearing House Aarhus Convention 3 pillars PRTR Vision The Slovenian portal will not be a copy of EIONET portal and will not only support international area of work but will stand on its own. It will, on a national level, provide a navigation in the environment information system, it will lay out different data sources according to environmental media, and support information on burdens to environment, the use of energy and materials, hazardous substances, waste, protection of environment, environmental damage, health, spatial environmental functions etc. The future portal will beside cooperation with EEA, also cover Aarhus convention and UNEP Infoterra. Figure 3 presents the vision we have now and could be changed in the process of its development. The main goal is to present all environmental issues in a complex and transparent way in one place. Open problems 1. Define the final content and the structure of the portal. 2. Find the solution to combine some existing content from web site and the channels in the new portal. 3. Find out how to include an application for web presentations (for air quality web presentation and GIS presentations for example). 4. Find out a search mechanism, which is compatible with Zope. 5. How to connect the local and regional level and how to delimit the content with them. Figure 3: Draft of future EIONET-SI portal

3 REPORTNET Photo from Thun by Jiri Hradec Tools for Reportnet are evolving By Eeva Palosuo and Hannu Saarenmaa The development of infrastructure and tools for streamlined data flow started in the year 2000 and continued in 2001 through several projects. ROD What reporting obligations do countries have? The Reporting Obligations Database (ROD) will contain an inventory of international reporting obligations for EU countries. This tool helps countries in supervising and managing the reporting to international stakeholders. In 2000 a web-accessible ROD prototype was developed and partially populated with several existing data sources. Reference information of environmental legislation was imported from CDS/DIR, those of conventions from REC, and existing descriptions of reporting obligations from an earlier standalone ROD version. The latter contained analysed information on inland waters, waste, and air. Upon finalisation of the content, ROD will show an inventory of legal and moral reporting obligations and data parameters to be collected based on directives, conventions and other agreements. Contents will be maintained centrally by the EEA. Obligations for the three themes had originally been described with over 25,000 questions, making the analysis far too complex. The interface and search tools have therefore evolved into a simpler version that replace verbal questions with lists of parameters. This will offer stakeholders the opportunity to identify overlapping parameters and agree upon the principle of Collect once, deliver many that shall ultimately reduce the national reporting burden. In 2002, the EEA will add full contents into the inventory, create links to national submissions, produce reports and indicators as a result of delivered data and bring the system to operational phase. Data Dictionary: Know your data A prerequisite for any data collection is to know the exact definition of data to be collected. ROD identifies the parameters, but, for the definitions, will link to Data Dictionary (DD). An early prototype of the DD, describing data elements and XML Schemas has been implemented and is running with sample data. Data definitions are based on the ISO11179 standard. In 2002,the DD will be brought to full initial operational state with validated content from priority areas. The system will link to other Reportnet systems like ROD and EEA Data Service. Content Registry: Where is the data? The objective of the Content Registry (CR) project is to develop a web-based reference service for easily locating reported datafiles, reports and other resources from distributed national, topic-specific and other information systems around EIONET. The CR harvests metadata at regular intervals from agreed services on EIONET s sites. Webbased search service let users find and locate resources of interest via the CR. An advanced prototype has been developed and is running in test environment with real metadata harvested from EEA's reporting service. Metadata is based on Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. The metadata is transferred as XML-files in RDF Schema format. Each service to be linked to the scope of the CR will produce its metadata in this format, compatible for the harvester. RDF-production capability is now being developed to CIRCA. The Metadata retrieving protocol for CIRCA is SOAP and a SOAP-wrapper for CIRCA API has been developed. In 2002 the CR shall be further populated with content from all kinds of available services and be brought to full initial operational state with validated content. Service specific search facilities are being created. For instance linking CR with ROD will allow to search all data files delivered under some obligation and to find material produced based on the reported data. OzoneWeb simple map-based system on hourly ozone levels The OzoneWeb system offers general public with almost real time ozone information from selected stations in European countries. Through user friendly Map-based visual interface,users can also look at stationinformation with ozone-graphs, link to national ozone-web-sites to get more information and access other relevant documentation. Countries transfer hourly ozone values in XML format to central server s MySQL database using HTTP-POST protocol. The system is now in test phase with data transfered from one country and it will run at EEA s E2RC operational environment. Workflow tool for managing processes in EIONET The aim is to develop a modern component-based generic workflow tool that can widely be used within the EIONET network and possibly other CIRCA installations for implementing process automation and status tracking for various collaboration processes. This year s project has developed a full-scale tool for EIONET by adding missing components on top of the workflow engine developed in The first application to demonstrate the usefulness of the full-scale tool will be some consultation process in EIONET. Pilot use starts in spring 2002 after internal tests. The workflow engine has been enhanced with process definition tool, administration tool for workflow set-up, control and management functions, sub-flow-features, looping possibilities and an interface to external applications. Integration with CIRCA 2.5 has been developed, including document management, for activities notification and link to EIONET's user directory services. Roles are used in process definitions and role occupants retrieved from the Directory. Collect once, deliver many reduce reporting burden with streamlined data collection The existing Data Exchange Module AQ-DEM is currently used by data suppliers in the countries for providing the EEA and the Commission with air quality data and meta information on air quality networks, stations and measurement configurations. EIONET and EMEP have collected overlapping AQ data from the countries. EMEP decided to use AQ-DEM for their data collection. Codes and data models were harmonised, database designs synchronised, station information overlaps removed, reports harmonised and XML applied. All these steps contributes towards reducing the national reporting burden. New version of data exchange module AE-DEM for air emissions information The project updates the existing set of software tools, available to EEA member countries for collection of air pollutant emission inventories and the subsequent reporting in response to international obligations. The main reason for this update was the adoption of a new reporting format by the UNFCCC. In addition, users requested a number of additional tools such as reports to IPPC/EPER, to LCP and in economic sectors. Continued on page 4

4 EIONET NEWS Continued from page 3 Further developments supporting the principle of Collect once, deliver many are in progress. Reporting format for the CRLTAP/EMEP conventions has been added, inclusion of IPPC/EPER and LCP-reporting is in progress, next versions of EstimatER and ProjectER are being developed, and XML-based data exchange is adopted. Waterbase - a reference database for Inlands Water The main goal of the WATERBASE project in 2000 was to start development of automated data exchange system for Inland Waters, in line with EIONET's generic dataflow architecture. Its scope was limited to the development of a consolidated WATERBASE prototype that structures and standardises data inputs from three IW topics: Lakes, Rivers and Groundwater. The project developed flexible generic and reusable components: A common data model with generic and topic specific parts. This model is suitable to all IW subtopics and will adapt to future Water topic needs. Metadata management via webinterfaces allows easy update of database attributes when necessary. Waterbase system has an object oriented three layers architecture and environment-independent solution, based on a reusable component framework, XML Server, with topic specific application components. The XML Server component is also used in the WebRod project. XML-based data exchange format is also made, in line with the data model, of a common part and topicspecific parts. This design applies to all involved IW topics. In the future air quality and air emissions topics will investigate whether this format could be adapted to their data exchange. The WATERBASE prototype is installed at AWW in Austria and at EEA and loaded with pilot contents from distributed non-homogeneous working databases from the three IW subtopics Groundwater/ Austria, Rivers/UK and Lakes/DK. The XML-based data exchange format was used in transferring data from the distributed working databases. The finalisation of the WATERBASE system to operations needs still to be done and missing water topics to be included as appropriate. Challenging requirements were met through commitment The development strategy applied throughout these projects is fully in line with the challenging requirements of the IDA programme and EIONET's IT strategy: The developed tools and generic solutions are flexible, reusable and promote harmonisation. Components and designs from these projects are used in further developments of the Reportnet infrastructure and applications. PORTALS Technical improvements of EIONET Portal Toolkit to support the Slovenian portal by Albert Kolar We would like to present some technical solutions used in creation of the new Slovenian EIONET portal. This document describes our modifications to EIONET Portal Tool Kit that simplifies managing of multilingual web pages and allow switching between languages on the fly. Introduction We are converting the current National EIONET web site ( eu.int/) to conform to the standards of the European Environment Agency (EEA) using Zope and the Portal Tool Kit (PTK). We have found PTK to be quite useful for allowing many different people to manage the web pages, while keeping a common look and feel over the whole site, but it was lacking support for multiple languages, so we made some modifications of our own. We have to say that we strongly support the idea of free software, but we have some problems in real life. We do not have any programmers employed at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning (MESP). It is not easy to find a company to support open source or free software in Slovenia. Strong connecting and coordinating efforts are needed at the MESP side to conduct the development. Many problems could have been easily avoided by writing all the code necessary from the scratch using C language, PHP and Apache Web server.. We have started testing the usage of channels and Rich Site Summaries (RSS) with the Austrian Federal Environment Agency. We also appreciate the help from technical EEA professionals. Now let's take a look at our changes in available tools. The lang variable The first thing that had to be done was to introduce a variable that would hold the information about the visitors language preference. The lang variable stores a numeric value like 0, 1, 2,... Number 0 has a special meaning. This is the default language. If the information is not available in the visitor's preferred language, it will be displayed using this language. It is also the language that is used for first time visitors. Number 1 is the second language, number 2 the next, and so on. The site administrator is free to assign any meaning to those numbers and define new languages that are supported. The lang variable is stored in a cookie on the visitor's computer. Every time the visitor tries to access a document, his language preference information is sent to the server, telling it how to render the document. Multi-lingual properties PTK uses properties all the time. Properties like site_title and site_subtitle insure that the same information about the site is displayed on the top of all documents. The title property of Directory and documents is used to render the breadcrumb trail. At the present time Zope does not offer support for multi-lingual properties, so we found another solution. We modified PTK so that properties can be entered in multiple languages, using the " " character as a delimiter. So if a site supports three languages, documents would have a title property like this: <title0> <title1> <title2>, using the same order for languages as the numbers for the lang variable. Note that there are no spaces between different titles and the delimiter. If, for some reason, the property is not available in one of the three languages, like language number 1 for example, one could use a property <title0> <title2>, and if the visitor has chosen the missing language as his preferred language, the title will be displayed in the default language (title0). Standard titles without the " " delimiters are also supported. In that case the server would act as if this is the default language and visitors would see the same title no matter what language they choose. Yihaw Directory Multi-lingual support also had to be implemented for Yihaw Directory. But since Yihaw Directory are almost entirely based on properties, the implementation is not that different from what we did with PTK. Basically everything that works for PTK's properties (see Multilingual properties section) works for properties of Yihaw objects. This means that from the maintainers point of view the only difference in creating a new multi-lingual Yihaw object is that he has to insert text in specified languages Continued on page 5

5 Continued from page 4 separated by delimiters into the object's property fields. Everything else like deleting, adding or copying of Yihaw Objects is done in exactly the same way as it was before. Combining Yihaw Directory with ordinary Directory While Yihaw Directory is a useful product for building large portals, it is not so well suited for smaller web sites that are acting as portals, but also provide some content of their own. The DTML method yihaw_toplevel was modified (the method's name is now render_toplevel) to make Yihaw and non-yihaw Directories work together. Yihaw Directory can now be used for creating larger indexes of (mostly external) links, and normal Directory are used to provide local content, while the new method enables automatic rendering of the toplevel index using the names of both Yihaw and ordinary Directory, or even DTML documents. What objects are used for creating the toplevel index is indicated by the boolean variable approved (the name is the same as the one previously used by Yihaw Directory). Multi-lingual documents The text for multiple languages can be stored in the same DTML document. There is no need to have a separate directory tree for each supported language. This makes the site administration much easier. The <dtml-if "lang=='1'"> tag is used at the beginning of the text in the first language(the first alternative language, not the default one), <dtml-elif "lang=='2'"> is used before the next language(note the use of elif - else if), and <dtml-else> is used before the default language. After that, the closing tag </dtml-else> has to be used. Because this can be a problem for people not used to HTML and DTML, we have designed an easier way to do this. We have written a server side script that automatically modifies a document created using a WYSIWYG HTML editor when it is uploaded. The script removes the header from the document and substitutes it with a standard EIONET header, insuring consistent look of all documents. The user begins the multi-lingual text with the <LANG> tag. Simple tags like <ENG> and <SLO>(English and Slovene) are used at the beginning of the text in the specified language. The last text is in the default language. It's preceded with the <DEF> tag. Finally, the multilingual text ends with a closing tag </LANG>. It's up to the site administrator to define the meaning of different language tags and the language number they refer to. There is probably some other way to do this that would make it even easier to use, but such solutions would have to be software dependent. The future of multi-lingual support in Zope This probably is not the most elegant solution to the problem. The next best thing would be if Zope supported multiple versions of the same document or property existing simultaneously in the database and using the right version based on the language selection. CIRCA CIRCA v2.5 new features and CIRCA on LINUX By Bald Herreman What s new? Since last September, you probably have noticed some changes in the CIRCA interface when logging into EEA CIRCA. CIRCA version 2.5 is more than a mere patch as it introduces several new functionalities in the Directory, in particular the key concept of Roles. What are Roles? Whereas the Site Directory in prior CIRCA versions only contained user accounts of every CIRCA user, it now also describes what everyone is doing. Roles are a way of grouping users by function in the EIONET. A given role might contain a number of individual user accounts that have been officially appointed with a responsibility for that particular role in their Member Country. What can you do with Roles? Roles allow for grouped access to any CIRCA service. You can add a Role as member to an Interest Group (IG) as you would add a normal user (assigning a user class etc.). All users ( Role occupants ) belonging to that role inherit the same access rights. Furthermore, roles can be used as mailing lists: each role has a unique address and when sending a mail to a specific role, all users in that role will individually receive that mail. The EIONET role-tree It is important to note that roles are set up as a directory or tree structure: A role can not only contain user accounts, but also other roles or sub roles in the same way that a directory in Windows can contain files, but also other directories. A sub role will inherit all memberships from the parent Role, which makes the Roles functionality even more powerful. The Role functionality in CIRCA 2.5 reflects the EIONET structure. Its definition required extensive analysis, given the fact that all privileges assigned to a Role are inherited by the Sub roles. If one Role is wrongly placed in the Role tree structure, all its users would have a access to wrong IGs and documents, receive mails they should not get etc. Let s take a practical example: The Role called eionet-nfp-mc-be shows that in the tree structure, there is a role called eionet at the top (European Environment Information and Observation Network), containing a sub role called nfp (National Focal point), that includes another role called mc (member country). Finally, the mc role contains a Role called be (Belgium). The Role eionet-nfp-mc-be is the EIONET National Focal Point in the member country of Belgium. For a more general overview of the complete Role Structure, see: Why are Roles so useful in practice? Imagine a user, called Mr. X with a specific function within the EIONET framework and that is being replaced by Mr Y. In previous CIRCA versions, Mr. X would have to be removed from all Interest Groups he is a member of, his user account would have to be deleted and his address would have to be deleted from all mailing lists he belong to. Mr Y would have to receive a new user account, be made a member of all IGs his predecessor was a member of and be included in all mailing lists. You can imagine the administrative overhead for one person and even the cost, when several persons have to be replaced! With CIRCA v2.5, replacing Mr X is done via a straightforward replacement by Mr Y in the Role. Mr Y. will automatically inherit all memberships from Mr. X in one go. The associated mailing list for that Role will also be updated accordingly. Organisations as separate attributes A second major improvement introduced in CIRCA v2.5 concerns the Organisations. Whereas in earlier versions, it was only possible to specify an organisation in the user details of a particular user account, Organisations can now be created as separate entries in the Site Directory, next to regular user accounts and Roles. Once an Organisation has Continued on page 6

6 EIONET NEWS Continued from page 5 been created, it can be linked to users and Roles. The main advantage here is that, whenever details of an organisation are changed (e.g. different phone number) this information is only updated in the Organisation entry of the Site Directory and all user accounts and Roles linked to this Organisation will automatically be updated. In the past, updating such information everywhere was simply not conceivable. XML-enabled functions In addition to normal HTTP (the regular way of using an internet browser), all these functions can be accessed via XML. This enables other systems to retrieve and use the data automatically, opening the door for new functionalities and interfacing with external systems. Check the following link to get a better idea of what a normal webpage in XML looks like: irc/eionet-circle/home/central_dir_ admin? fn=roles&out=xml CIRCA freely available! Run it on LINUX Finally, you might be pleased to learn that CIRCA v2.5 was also released in a LINUX version and is thus no longer restricted to expensive branded UNIX platforms. Now what exactly is the difference between a branded UNIX and a LINUX operating system? In terms of features, both are quite similar. However, the major difference is that LINUX supports a much wider range of PC-like hardware, and is usually free of license costs. Many prefer LINUX instead of branded UNIX because it offers the functionality of a server on PC hardware at a fraction of the cost. DIRECTORY EIONET Directory: 2001 Revamp By Hermann Peifer The EIONET Directory is the official directory of the European Environment Information and Observation Network. It contains addresses of all its national elements, i.e. the National Focal Points and National Reference Centres in member countries and collaborating countries, as well as contact information on European Topic Centres and EEA staff, who are coordinating EIONET related projects. A revision of the organisational network was necessary as a consequence of the setup of the new European Topic Centres in late 2000 and the extension of EIONET to the agriculture, energy and transport sectors. The EIONET Directory update was first announced in the NFP/ EIONET meeting in October months later, after a period of intensive data collection and processing, the new EIONET Directory service was launched during the NFP/EIONET meeting in October The new EIONET Directory is available as a public online web service and is part of EEA's CIRCLE services. One can search for users, organisations and roles. Most interesting is probably to browse the roles function in the Directory in order to find out who does what in EIONET. The web interface offers hierachical browsing to quickly find the experts from all countries for a certain topic. Canned (i.e. ready to use) queries are, on the other hand, very helpful to generate dynamic address lists of national networks. The address information is presented in 2 different ways: The public view shows only name and organisation of the role occupants. In the EIONET view (CIRCLE login required) all contact information is presented including and phone numbers. is EIONET's main communication channel. Mailing lists handling is part of the new directory services. How to use the role based mailing lists of the new EIONET Directory is explained at s/url (CIRCLE login required). The role based functionality is operational since early October and has already been used intensively. Maintenance of the national address information is within the responsibility of the National Focal Points, that can perform all necessary changes via a web interface. EIONET Helpdesk is offering training courses on that topic to National Focal Points. ETCS Centralising web services of European Topic Centres By Hermann Peifer CIRCLE Interest Groups and public web sites of European Topic Centres (ETC) have now been transferred to servers at EEA. Content provision and management of the services will continue to be the responsibility of ETCs. Public web sites of ETCs are completely based on the Zope web application server. Tailored web objects have been developed in Zope in order to facilitate maintenance of the web sites. In June, a training day was held at EEA for the Data Managers of the first 4 new ETCs. The training focussed on how to efficiently lead CIRCLE Interest Groups and on how to manage a Zope web site. This training module was also delivered in Barcelona for ETC Terrestrial Environment. Data and Web Guidelines have been provided to the Data Managers of the Topic Centres. The ETC websites are: European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change European Topic Centre on Nature Protection and Biodiversity European Topic Centre on Terrestrial Environment European Topic Centre on Waste and Material Flows European Topic Centre on Water

7 COUNTRIES EEA membership expansion to candidate countries By Stoyan Blagoev The year 2001 marks a new challenge for EEA in the form of enlargement to new Phare member countries. By November 2001 eight candidate countries became EEA members (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Latvia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia). Three other countries (Czech Republic, Lithuania, Romania) ratified the agreement but are still in the promulgation process. And the last two countries Poland and Turkey are expected to ratify in early All this means that in 2002, EEA will be enlarged with 13 new countries who will be full members, paying the membership fee and participating in EEA activities and work programme. The cooperation between EEA and the Phare countries was developed through the Phare programme since 1996, expecting EEA membership to take place early To bridge the gap until full EEA membership, EEA concluded a 1.1 Meuro grant agreement with the Commission to support the cooperation during that period. Within this project, Finsiel Romania was contracted by EEA to offer, up to December 2001, the following services for the ten Phare Accession countries: Provision of helpdesk services in co-operation with the Network Management Centre in Brussels; Promotion of the use of the EIONET network and monitoring its success in the ten Phare accession countries; Assistance to bring environmental information on-line on the Internet and partnership with the European Environmental Reference Centre; Inventory of the IT hardware and software tools used by the ten Phare accession countries and identification of any possible problems that the users might face in making full use of the EEA public Web site and information and data exchange tools. This prepared for the future development of the EEA Web site to better serve these countries and ensures compatibility with EEA. From 2002 onwards, the ten Phare Accession Countries are expected to be supported by EEA as full members. Another EEA grant from the Commission will ensure the support of the EIONET network in Bosnia- Herzegovina and FYR of Macedonia until February 2003, as well as the extension of the EIONET network to Croatia and its support until February CONFERENCE CDS eeionet work conference 2001 By Stefan Jensen This year saw a merger of the well-established ITTAG meeting with the annual CDS symposium and workshop. This CDS - eeionet work conference formed an opportunity to get more than one hundred people from both networks together. Hosted by the Swiss Environment Agency (BUWAL), it took place at Hotel Seepark located at the shore of the magnificent lake Thun. The work conference started off with an introduction to the shaping REPORTNET architecture and examples on how to implement it. In sessions on the current developments of the CIRCA groupware (CIRCA goes Linux ) and the application of Zope content management software for the portal toolkit development, the most recent developments were presented. Both developments areas are examples for the increased usage of open source technologies in eeionet. The following days saw presentations and discussions on the various approaches and experiences concerning the usage of environmental metadata by various partners of the network and in building environmental web-services. The metadata issues were increasingly discussed together with the most recent topics in the Internet community (semantic web, RDF, XML ) The opportunity was used to underline the orientation towards Dublin Core as an EIONET "metadata standard" for resource discovery. Further presentations showed the increasing diversity and maturity of environmental web-services and highlighted their role in a wider European environmental information infrastructure. This year s event was a good start for continuing these joint meetings in the years to come.

8 EIONET NEWS TRAINING EIONET Training Programme The EIONET Training Programme has been around for several years. For this season, many new courses are now offered, in particular on the new features of CIRCA. Even experienced CIRCA users may not be aware of all the new and useful functions introduced in CIRCA 2.5. Focus in the Training Programme is still on CIRCA use, but the scope will be widened in the future as new tools become operational. Since not all users have the same level of CIRCA background and this knowledge should be tailor made to the need of the specific end-user, the new EIONET Training Programme was set up as an integrated course curriculum for EIONET end-users, data providers, Interest Group leaders, and role and Site Directory administrators. We are confident that most CIRCA users should be able to find a course that suits them best. The Training Programme home page is: Training/ The schedule will be regularly updated with new locations and dates, when they become available. The classes for the first half of 2002 are: Basics for all EIONET CIRCLE users: 23 January, Brussels, Belgium 11 March, Brussels, Belgium 11 April, Copenhagen, Denmark 3 June, Brussels, Belgium Essentials for EIONET CIRCLE Interest Group Leaders: 24 January, Brussels, Belgium 12 March, Brussels, Belgium 12 April, Copenhagen, Denmark 4 June, Brussels, Belgium Special course on advanced features for Interest Group Leaders: Upon request The Library, doing it the bulk way: 13 March, Brussels, Belgium Site Directory and instance administration: 14 March, Brussels, Belgium 5 June, Brussels, Belgium Keeping your country Roles up to date: 28 January, Copenhagen, Denmark 31 May, Copenhagen, Denmark Installing CIRCA 2.5 on a LINUX server: 15 March, Brussels, Belgium Zope, EIONET Portal Tool Kit and portal communication: 27 May, Copenhagen, Denmark Data management and application development with MySQL: Not scheduled yet Data flows on e-eionet: Upon request Attending the classes is free of charge for EIONET users, but you will have to cover your own travel and accomodations costs. Classrooms are quite small and registrations are handled on a first come, first served basis. Should you have any questions or remarks concerning the content, organisation or other training related issues, please feel free to contact the Helpdesk, either by phone or . CALENDAR NFP/EIONET Meetings January, EEA May 1-2 October CDS eeionet work conference September YOUR DEDICATED HELPDESK EMPA September, Vienna NMC CIRCLE User Group February June October Problems with EIONET-CIRCLE? Contact the Network Management Centre operated by TietoEnator in Brussels: Tel helpdesk@eionet.eu.int URL: nmc.eionet.eu.int WEB SITES TO VISIT nmc.eionet.eu.int helpdesk@eionet.eu.int EIONET News is published twice a year and is sent to everyone who has an account on EEA's central CIRCA user directory and has entered a postal address there. Getting an account is fully automated through self-registration. Newsletter Management and Content: YMAGE Design and production: POPLAR, Brussels