The Water and Energy facilities InfoRmation System (WEIRS)

The Water and Energy Facilities are programmes from the European Commission for funding projects in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Their main objective is to help achieving the Millennium Development Goals in this region through the improvement of water/energy supply and sanitation coverage. The increasing number of project proposals and historical data from the different projects calls requires information infrastructure for evaluating and analysing call-related data. This paper explains the technical architecture specifications for an information system that facilitates the management of the water and energy project proposals, the WEIRS database. The system, based on open source software, allows the incorporation of external data sources and indicators in a very flexible way, enhancing the assessment of projects in their national contexts. The paper also describes the system design, interoperability, and adoption of Web Map Services standards. WEIRS is a decision support prototype tool for the European Commission services for defining and implementing sustainable policies as well as identifying priority needs for development. The system is accessible on-line for authorized users through the www.aquaknow.net and www.euei.net web portals.JRC.H.1-Water Resource