1. Introduction

The objective of the Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project is to make existing distributed environmental data available to citizens and other users through an intelligent interface acting as a one-stop shop. The users, who may also be public authorities (for instance environmental regulatory agencies) and the public, will be able to address their needs for Inland Water data through one common interface, independent of physical or logical location of the databases, the database languages used, or of the specific nomenclature used in a specific database, and without knowing which database or databases contain the relevant information, by data mining the most complete set of information sources.

2. Background

The system is based on the technology of independent software agents. Each of the agents has a specific task in the complex process leading from the question raised by the user, through the formulation of specific (but database independent) queries, through to the specific queries sent to databases which the agents evaluate as potentially having an answer or part of the answer for the actual question. Such requests for information require a common "language", a list of accepted and well-defined words, that is, the basis for an ontology, relevant for inland waters. When results are being returned, post processing will be performed in order to furnish the user with information in the most useful form. This post processing consists of harmonising, aggregating, and presenting them in a consistent form, allowing variation in the level of detail presented, and integrating decision support tools for environmental management for the benefit of policy makers.

3. Final Aim

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project aims to develop at European level a service integrating disparate, heterogeneous, government databases on inland water. This will make existing distributed environmental data available to users through an intelligent interface acting as a one-stop shop. The prototype produced in this project creates a new standard for environmental data exchange and thereby eases environmental reporting and planning.

4. Main thrusts of the EDEN-IW project

The research project has 5 main thrusts:

1. Development of advanced agent-based technology to underpin rich semantic information exchange across Europe with the additional capability of communicating with other agent systems within an European and global framework, for instance the agent system employed by the US EPA in the Environmental Data Exchange Network (more info).

2. Research and development of a specific application on Inland Water data, i.e. connect a number of relevant databases to the system (more info).

3. Enrichment of the possibilities for environmental management by adding new types of intelligent software agents, capable of providing the citizens and decision makers with decision support and knowledge needed to manage complex environmental risk situations related to inland water (more info).

4. Assurance of efficient and effective semantic management, by developing a relevant, specific Inland Water ontology and specific Inland Water glossaries, supported by two external reference multilingual thesauri, allowing easy extension to multi-language situations (more info).

5. Serving the public and the user community, which currently consist of European Environment Agency, United States Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Defence, United States Department of Energy, European Topic Centre for Water and the Italian Ministry for the Environment (more info).

5. Technical approach

The technical approach is to use Software Agent Technology, i.e. to use a sophisticated set of independent, distributed software agents that advertise, broker, and exchange the data requested by the user. Data is harmonised while maintaining autonomy of the data custodians, and the databases are integrated into an efficient tool for decision support by a shared knowledge base. The technology provides uniform access to disparate information resources without imposing additional requirements such as restructuring or integrating databases with others. Implementation is done in an open source environment (FIPA-OS) facilitating later applications in other areas. The technical approach is illustrated in the following diagram, where the various software agents each plays a role in assuring that the user gets the available data presented.

In Figure 1, the user agent is the first to process the request from the user for a specific information. Depending on the situation, the request may then need to be translated through the ontology agent before it is passed to a broker agent and other agents which assures that the request is forwarded to the relevant databases. At the other end, the resource agents, specific to each of the databases to be accessed, are individual pieces of software, which are installed at the same computer as the database (resource) in question. On the way back to the user, the replies again may (or may not) pass the translator (ontology) agents to furnish a multilingual output as required.

In the initial phase, more simple laboratory set-ups will be explored, with just one user and one broker agent, and with number of resource agents installed on various computers. These agents are schematically shown in figure 2.

It is foreseen to install the Resource Agents on a number of computers, chosen with as many different platforms as possible. Currently available platforms includes PC's, both 486 and 586 including portables (with operating systems Windows NT, Windows 2000, RedHat Linux 6.1, RedHat Linux 6.2, and Mandrake Linux 8.0), and SUN Computers (with operating systems SUN OS 2.6, SUN OS 2.7 and Mandrake Linux 7.1). The first experiences from the installation of these platforms indicate that it is indeed possible to obtain the cross platform functionality which is needed for the project.

6. Short term development

In the short term, the initial experiments will be continued to provide a conceptual demonstration of the agent technology and of its use in the EDEN-IW project. Then as described in the technical annex, the future development relates to the enrichment of the agent universe, thus increasing the capacity of the overall system and the options for the users. The agent concept is very versatile and allows fast prototyping of new agent types, easily integratable with the existing agents.

Especially the links with Policy options have to be conceptually explored, by benchmarking on decision questions like: "Is the Water Framework Directive producing the expected benefits ?" or "In which catchment areas are the water quality limit values for water pollution exceeded ?" or "how can catchment area X be cleaned so it can serve as drinking water?"

Such question have indicated the need for agents with among others the capabilities of providing an overview of the water quality over time, with the knowledge of water pollution limits, and with model capability on a given catchment area. Finally these information needs to be combined and presented to the decision makers in an understandable form, underlining the need for software agents with Decision Support capabilities.

7. Issues that EDEN-IW would help to solve

The main problems that EDEN-IW would help to solve are:

1. Gathering data, data mining, using for instance the European Environmental Information and Observation Network;

2. Improving data comparability;

3. Providing the Community institutions and the member countries with the information they need for framing and implementing sound and effective policies;

4. Increasing interoperability in the environmental data exchange area by creating a broad consensus towards common standards.

5. Producing information on the state and trends of Europe's inland waters, generating regular indicator-based reports;

6. Providing the citizens with easy access to distributed data, with advanced visualisation and decision support systems;

8. Perspectives and Visions

The perspectives and the visions of this project are that a citizen or a user, probably a policy maker, will be able to get rapid answers to environmental questions on inland waters, without any knowledge about what data sources might be available or how to connect to them. The questions may range from global to continental, from national to local, following political boundaries, or catchment areas as required.

In principle, a large number of inland water databases in the world could be linked together with this technology, providing citizens with access to a world wide inland water database, together with tools to assess the information and regulate the inland water environment in a more efficient and effective way than in the current situation.

The perspectives and visions beyond the project is to allow all databases linked to the network to communicate, and thus to do for the databases, what the world wide web and the Internet have done for the written text media.

In short to create the options and technology for a world-wide databases for inland water issues.