In its response, EuroGeoSurveys (EGS) emphasises that groundwater is Europe's largest distributed freshwater resource and plays a vital role in drinking water supply, climate change adaptation, agriculture, industry, energy production, and ecosystem protection.
The organisation stresses the need to advance digital tools, monitoring systems, and forecasting capabilities to support the sustainable management of groundwater resources and strengthen resilience to climate change and water scarcity.
Among the key priorities proposed by EGS are:
- establishing long-term European groundwater monitoring, assessment, and forecasting systems;
- harmonising groundwater data collection and exchange across countries;
- developing interoperable data standards and infrastructures in line with the FAIR principles and the INSPIRE Directive;
- expanding the use of artificial intelligence and data-driven approaches for forecasting and decision-making;
- developing a federated European infrastructure that connects national groundwater data systems.
The document also highlights the achievements of the Geological Service for Europe (GSEU) project, under which the European Groundwater Monitoring Database (EUGM) has been developed. The database currently includes more than 15,800 groundwater level monitoring sites across 24 countries, over 2,600 near real-time monitoring sites, and more than 120,000 groundwater quality monitoring sites, demonstrating the technical feasibility of a unified European groundwater data infrastructure.