A spatially distributed assessment of water : allocation in EU27 for Year 2000

Water management relies not only on data on water availability, but also on data on water abstractions and demands. Hydrological modelling studies often neglect the impact of water abstractions and not all models are designed to handle abstractions. Given the various activities for European scale assessments made at the JRC and other institutions, it is desirable to have quantitative and spatially distributed background information on water abstractions, losses and returns to better judge the potential relevance of human abstractions on water quantity and to have reasonable estimates for modelling purposes. The work presented in this report aims at evaluating the potential of readily available data from the OECD/EUROSTAT Joint Questionnaire on Inland Waters and relevant EUROSTAT data to support regionalized water balance assessments including human water abstraction and consumption. This report further document the methodological approaches to generate maps on water abstractions, losses and returns across the EU at 10x10km resolution. Specific tasks documented in this report include : • Modification and extension of available water abstraction data to generate consistent and complete datasets at national level. • Spatial disaggregation of national data to regional and local (10x10km cell) level using proxy data and simulation results. • Estimation of consumptive water losses and returns • Comparison of water abstractions and losses to water availability and mapping of water resources pressure indicators. The report is organized in three parts. Section 2 describes the data used in this assessment and the approaches to compile the specific data for the Atlas of water use and returns. Section 3 is an Atlas documenting and presenting the datasets. Section 4 is a general discussion of the approaches and results.