EuroGeoSurveys has responded to the European Commission’s public consultation on “Water Sector – Accelerating Digitalisation for Better Management and Sustainability”, calling for groundwater to be explicitly recognised as a strategic component of Europe’s water resilience and digitalisation agenda.
Groundwater is Europe’s largest distributed freshwater resource and plays a critical role in public water supply, climate adaptation, agriculture, industry, energy production, and ecosystem protection. We highlight the importance of digital tools, monitoring, and forecasting services to support sustainable groundwater management and improve resilience to climate change and water scarcity.
Key priorities identified include:
- Long-term European groundwater monitoring, assessment, and forecasting services
- Harmonised groundwater data collection and exchange across Member States
- Interoperable standards and FAIR, INSPIRE-compliant data infrastructures
- Greater use of artificial intelligence and data-driven approaches for forecasting and decision-making
- Federated European infrastructures that connect and strengthen trusted national groundwater information systems
Many of these building blocks already exist. Through the Geological Service for Europe (GSEU) project, supported by the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI), Geological Survey Organisations have established the European Groundwater Monitoring Database (EUGM), demonstrating that a harmonised, interoperable, and operational European groundwater information infrastructure is both technically feasible and capable of delivering value for water resilience, policy implementation, and climate adaptation.