Expert Opinion PLC Reporting
The Pollutant Load Compilation (PLC) reporting to the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) serves to monitor nutrient and heavy metal inputs from point and area sources and to monitor water inflow into the Baltic Sea. Objectives are the observation of the temporal development of these entries, the estimation of the extent to which changes in the entries have anthropogenic causes and the evaluation of the effectiveness of protective measures.
Since the compilation of the data required for reporting is currently causing considerable effort for the responsible state authorities and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), which is responsible for German reporting, and target is also to reduce the effort as far as possible, but above all to establish more effective quality assurance, UBA has commissioned the "Expert Report on Optimising the Data Flow of PLC Reporting to HELCOM" now available.
In order to optimize the process of data transmission, various main topics were examined:
- Analysis of the data flow between the federal states and UBA
- Establishing correspondence with related reporting obligations
- Examination of alternatives to optimise reporting
- Creation of a sketch for a WEB-based database
- Suggestions for suitable modules to ensure data quality
The results documented measures that make sense in the short, medium and long term to improve reporting quality and reduce costs.
