Data Centres for Natural Resources and Products

This project sets up the structure for the Data Centres for Natural Resources and Products. Existing tools as well as sources of relevant data are analysed, in order to identify potential elements of the Data Centres. The aim of the Data Centres is to enable the assessment of the relationship between resource use, economic growth and environmental impacts.

The Sustainable Development Strategy and all other sustainability policies of the European Union need to be based on factual evidence and data. Eurostat, together with DG Environment (DG ENV), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), signed a Technical Arrangement (Group of Four – Go4) establishing 10 Data Centres: Natural Resources, Products (IPP), Waste, Soil, Forestry, Air, Climate Change, Water, Biodiversity, and Land Use. The main purpose of these Data Centres is to improve knowledge about the relationship between resource use, economic growth and environmental impacts. Eurostat was given responsibility for the Data Centres for Natural Resources, Products and Waste. It then set a major call for tender divided in three lots aiming at the provision of three major building blocks for operationalising the Data Centres for Natural Resources and Products. TNO (the Netherlands), CML (Leiden University, Netherlands) and SERI work on Lot 1 „Developing first versions of the Data Centres”. Lot 1 will providing a basic, consistent architecture in which data and indicators are placed.

Within Lot 1, SERI is responsible for the task „Identification of modules“. The task consist of a review of data sets that are described within the data centres, including direct links to sources, information on data coverage, quality issues, etc. The task also include elaborating structure and texts for the Wiki system in which the different modules of the Data Centres will be presented.