Filling the gap between Earth observation and policy making in the Black Sea catchment with enviroGRIDS A. Lehmann a, *, G. Giuliani a,b , E. Mancosu c , K.C. Abbaspour d , S. So ¨ zen e , D. Gorgan f , A. Beel g , N. Ray a,b a University of Geneva, Institute for Environmental Sciences, Forel Institute, enviroSPACE Lab., Battelle – Building D, 7 route de Drize, CH-1227 Carouge, Switzerland b United Nations Environment Programme, Global Resource Information Database – Geneva, Cha ˆ telaine, Switzerland c European Topic Centre – Spatial Information and Analysis, University of Malaga, PTA – C/ Marie Curie 22, 59590, Spain d Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Duebendorf, Switzerland e Istanbul Technical University, Environmental Engineering Department, 34469 Maslak, Istanbul, Turkey f Computer Science Department, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania g Antea Group, Poortakkerstraat 41, 9051 Gent, Belgium e n v i r o n m e n t a l s c i e n c e & p o l i c y x x x ( 2 0 1 4 ) x x x – x x x a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 15 November 2013 Received in revised form 18 February 2014 Accepted 19 February 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: Climate change Demographic scenarios Land cover change Hydrological modelling Data sharing Data processing a b s t r a c t The environmental status of the Black Sea is obviously closely related to its catchment. Being a closed sea, this large water body drains an area of more than 2 million km 2 , encompassing 23 countries inhabited by more than 180 million people. The main environ- mental issues faced by the Black Sea catchment are the same as elsewhere in Europe. These problems are exacerbated by global changes with drastic changes predicted in temperature and precipitation by the end of the century, as well as land use and demographic changes. These environmental problems are taking place in a complex geopolitical situation. In this particular context, data sharing is essential to inform managers and policy-makers about the state of the environment, which will ultimately influence the state of the Black Sea itself. The enviroGRIDS project was set up in order to promote international data sharing initia- tives such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems and the European INSPIRE directive. The enviroGRIDS project was successful in reaching the following objectives: (a) performing a gap analysis on existing Earth observations systems in the region; (b) devel- oping regional capacities at institutional, infrastructure and human resource levels; (c) creating regional scenarios to set the scene for plausible climatic, demographic and land use futures; (d) building the first hydrological model for the entire Black Sea catchment; (e) developing the Black Sea Catchment Observation System based on interoperability stan- dards and Grid computing technologies; (f) showcasing data sharing in several case studies, addressing important environmental issues while building a network of people with improved capacity on data sharing principles. These relative successes should not, however, hide the difficulties in making the necessary Earth observation data available to scientists, decision makers and the public, as the mind-sets at all levels are changing * Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 22 379 00 21. E-mail addresses: lehmanth@gmail.com, anthony.lehmann@unige.ch (A. Lehmann). ENVSCI-1331; No. of Pages 12 Please cite this article in press as: Lehmann, A., et al., Filling the gap between Earth observation and policy making in the Black Sea catchment with enviroGRIDS. Environ. Sci. Policy (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2014.02.005 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2014.02.005 1462-9011/# 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.