About WISE

The Water Information System for Europe (WISE) is a partnership between the European Commission (DG Environment, Joint Research Centre and Eurostat) and The European Environment Agency.

WISE addresses several user groups:

• EU institutions as well as Member States national, regional and local administrations working in water policy development or implementation
• Professionals working in the water field from public or private organisations, with a technical interest on water
• Scientists working in the water field
• General public, including in this group those working in private or public entities not directly related to water policy but with an indirect interest in water (regular or sporadic)

WISE was launched for public use as a web-based service on 22 March (World Water Day) 2007 providing a web-portal entry to water related information ranging from inland waters to marine. The web-portal is now grouped into sections for

• EU water policies (directives, implementation reports and supporting activities..)
• Data and themes (reported datasets, interactive maps, statistics, indicators,..)
• Modelling (now - and forecasting services across Europe..)
• Projects and research (inventory for links to recently completed and ongoing water related projects and research activities..)

For users from EU institutions or other environmental administrations WISE provides input to thematic assessments in the context of EU water related policies. For water professionals and scientists WISE facilitates access to reference documents and thematic data, which can be downloaded for further analyses. For the general public, WISE illustrates a wide span of water related information by visualisations on interactive maps, graphs and indicators.