"SANDRE": French National Service for Water Data and Common Reference Frames Management

 

French National Service for Water Data and Common Reference Frames Management Establishing a common language The French National Service for Water Data and Common Reference Frames Management (SANDRE) was created in 1993 to simplify the exchange of data between the various stakeholders involved.

 

It thus offers a unique interchange interface and addresses the need to establish a common language between partners from the water world.

 

Through “SANDRE”, many tools are then developed to allow the stakeholders concerned to make their information systems interoperable: dictionaries and interactive exchange scenarios, web services, reference data, a cartographic atlas, a metadata catalogue, audits of computer systems, compliance labels, etc.

 

“SANDRE” is proposing more than 20,000 pages of technical specifications. It establishes compliance labels for over 15,000 files per year and more than 30,000 interventions (taxons, substances, etc.). Its website receives more than 250,000 visitors a year.

 

IOWater takes care of “SANDRE” Technical Secretariat with the support of the National Agency for Water and Aquatic Environments (ONEMA).

 

For example, each year in France, more than ten million results of water analyses (drinking water, surface water, groundwater, coastal water, wastewater,…) are produced and exchanged between analysis laboratories and partners (ARS, DREAL, Water Agencies, industrialists,…).

 

IOWater, as “SANDRE” Secretariat, worked out, with the support of the Ministries in charge of the Environment and Health and ONEMA and with the assistance of a group of experts, a standard for data interchange: “EDILABO”.

 

The order of 29 November 2006, stipulates, in article 3, that any laboratory must from now on be able to receive a request for analyses and to provide results in the “EDILABO” format.

 

The stakeholders must change their information systems by developing an interchange interface in conformity with the “EDILABO” standard, version 2 published in 2014.

 

Extension to other fields

IOWater also intervenes for:

Under the European INSPIRE Directive, IOWater is a contri - buting member to the writing of specifications on the interchange of water data.

An approximating of ”SANDRE” and INSPIRE models was published on our website.

The new dictionaries of ”SANDRE” data on wetlands, river and administrative reference frames are now compatible with this Directive.

An online service is already being tested; it allows any WIS user to transform a file in ”SANDRE” format into the INSPIRE format.

 

The communities of research, standardization and industry were gathered to participate in the first Interoperability and Innovation Days. On this occasion, IOWater presented the ”SANDRE” semantic repositories for the sharing and dissemination of geographic data.

IOWater, as ”SANDRE” Secretariat, is contributing to national projects developed by the partners of the French Water Information System (WIS):

IOWater has developed a service to transform a ”SANDRE” XML file into a more readable format for the user. This service also controls the data and issues certificates.

The graph below shows the number of ”SANDRE” certificates (in percentage) issued to water stakeholders in 2014 by type of exchange scenario.

IOWater controls the geographic data collected from WIS data producers. These data are then published on ”SANDRE” website in the atlas and metadata catalogue.