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Organization of Water Management in France |
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| KNOWLEDGE OF WATER RESOURCES AND HYDRO-SYSTEMS |
The quantitative and qualitative integrated management of water
resources in a watershed, as well as the preservation of their aquatic media,
imply the collection and interpretation of numerous data in order to prepare
coherent schemes, the knowledge of the resource and of its uses, the design
and implementation of action programmes, and the assessment of their impacts.
The organization of these information systems has been progressive
and is concentrated at present within a NATIONAL WATER DATA NETWORK which
widens the prospects of a new, innovating approach.
B 1 - THE NATIONAL WATER DATA NETWORK (RNDE)
Everywhere, either at local, national or European level, the
need to have access to available data on water is felt, either to be informed
on the state of the environment, to direct policies or to measure their impacts.
Water-related data are plenty, but nevertheless remain hardly
accessible.
Widely spread between several operators, data are more than
often defined and stored to meet particular needs. This obviously restrains
the dissemination of data necessary for any summary.
RNDE, the National Water Data Network aims to remedy this situation, by standardizing data and ensuring their access and exchange.
a) The RNDE agreement
This agreement, signed in July 1992 by the Ministry for the Environment, the six Water Agencies, the French Institute for Environment, the Higher Council of Fisheries and the International Office for Water, determines the Network's objectives and defines its organizational principles, and paves the way for a real and active phase of exchanging water data.
- River Basin data bases : they are operational in each of the six river basins and are the basis of the network.
Set up to serve local producers and users, they collect, store and disseminate the basin data.- The National data base : Fed with data gathered by the river basin data banks, it centralizes and processes information to meet national or international demands.
- Specialized data banks : they are included in the network, but keep their own objectives which are to gather data on rainfall, hydrology, coastal water quality, etc...
b) The role of the International Office for Water
The International Office for Water accomplishes a double mission :
- It prepares and manages the national data dictionary, SANDRE (French Data Reference Centre for Water) which is an essential element of the RNDE network, without which there would be no possibility of exchanging and summarizing the data produced from various sources;
- Secondly, it operates the National Water Data Base (BNDE).
B 2 - WARNING NETWORKS AND AUTOMATIC DATA TRANSMISSION
Some data, such as those necessary for protection against high
water flows, floods, or for managing installations, must be processed in real
time. To this effect, specific monitoring networks, telecommunication and data
processing networks have been set up.
This type of network includes organized systems with devices,
processing centres, expert systems, procedures. Generally and logically, one
would find :
Data organization, integration and processing are specific
to each mission.
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