European Water Knowledge Portal
Now nearly a decade old, the Water Information System for Europe (WISE) began as an initiative to modernise the collection and dissemination of information on water policy across Europe. Through previous Framework Programmes, WISE has been complemented with a web portal WISE-RTD on research results and the interfacing of them with European water policies The EU-funded project 'Science, technology and policy interfacing using WISE-RTD' (STEP-WISE) expanded the WISE-RTD portal to include all major European policies alongside recent research projects in the water area. In addition to the EU's Water Framework Directive (WFD), already included in the water knowledge portal, another nine EU Directives relating to water have been selected and their policy tasks extracted. Projects already present in the WISE-RTD database were scanned for their potential support for the new set of directives. Recent projects were added. In order to facilitate the introduction of EU water research in the United States, also the US Clean Water Act was implemented as a user entry. Summaries of research projects and results are ‘translated’ into laymen’s English and linked to the related policies. Outcomes of the STEP-WISE project will include increased access to and use of EU research results for economic growth and social welfare by policymakers, researchers and industries. By reducing barriers to the dissemination of water-related RTD results, the project has improved access to scientific knowledge. To facilitate the interfacing between the different stakeholder groups, an e-learning tool was incorporated in the WISE-RTD Web Portal. It allows a better understand the view points of the other stakeholders. Among the recommendations coming from the project's final conference was that future European research projects should have a professional communication strategy. Furthermore, the project results should be available online well after the project ends and the project teams should indicate how their results are relevant for Europe.
