European Topic Centre / Catalogue of Data Sources (ETC/CDS)

Objectives

From 1995 - 1998, ISEP was part of the Consortium of the European Topic Centre on Catalogue of Data Sources. The objective of the ETC/CDS was the construction of a European Environmental Catalogue of Metadata. ISEP has been involved in this project on a co-ordinative and on an expert level.

Within ETC/CDS several task groups have been established:

ISEP was responsible for the implementation of Task 4 (Harmonized Terminology) and involved in Task 5 and Task 6. On the co-ordinative level, ISEP was facilitating communication between the European project partners by applying the ISEP/CEDAR network-infrastructure, by organizing workshops and compiling publications emerging from project work.

Project Contractors

Initiated and funded by the European Environment Agency (EEA) (http://www.eea.eu.int/)
Implemented under the leadership of the Ministry of Environment of Lower Saxony, Hannover (http://www.mu.niedersachsen.de/)
in co-operation with Partners from 8 European countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland).

Outputs

The output of the project work was to provide up-to-date, harmonised, reliable information on the state of the European environment. Today, the CDS (http://www.mu.niedersachsen.de/system/cds/) provides meta-information to the users of environmental information and data, helping them to locate and access relevant sources.

Several tools have been developed to support the different tasks:

for the data collection the WinCDS - available for free
for online retrieval/distribution the online cataloguing system WebCDS
for indexing and retrieval - the search and indexing functions of both applications are based on the GEMET - the GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus - available for free

The mission of the ETC/CDS is to conceptualise and implement a locator system for environmental metainformation from all Network members in Europe - the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) to provide environmental metainformation for the EEA, the EIONET and the public as well and to harmonise and promote concepts for registering and locating this information in Europe.

The ETC/CDS collects and maintains metadata of the EEA, its member organisations and of 13 PHARE countries. Metainformation hereby is defined as information about environmental information and data: WHO is responsible for WHAT information, in WHICH form and WHERE the data exists as well, as how to get access to it.

The ETC/CDS supports the database 'Directory of Information Resources' (DIR), part of the European Reference Centre, including collecting and updating metainformation based on specific selection criteria (Addresses e.g. EEA / EIONET members and institutions; Data sources e.g. EEA Products, EU legislation, State of the Environment reports). The ETC/CDS organises meetings and workshops on these special issues of CDS and related objectives.

ETC/CDS Homepage