The Czech Statistical Office, as a responsible body for sending data sets of water statistics to Eurostat, has good and long-lasting experience with data compilations on the national level. An additional demand for data compilation on river basin level was highlighted on the EU level in 2008 in order to complement the EU Water Framework Directive with respective water statistics. The Czech Statistical Office decided to launch a project to be able to meet this new demand. The Czech Republic is divided into 3 River Basin Districts (RBD) and into 8 River Basin District Subunits (RBDS); we found out that existing methods of data compilation were not suitable for these lower levels. The work of an expert team was focused on administrative data sources and established the contact with relevant bodies in our country, such as the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Water Management Information Portal, which had been established as the result of good cooperation between these two Ministries, proved to be a good source of data for this purpose. More than 20 databases and data sets were gained. They were primarily established for other than statistical purpose and MS Access and MS Excel were used as the tools for adaptation of data. The project resulted in successfully completing the standard tables of the Eurostat Regional Environment Questionnaire. We filled tables in RBD and RBDS structure with data relating to (i) water abstraction by source, (ii) water use, (iii) population connected to wastewater treatment, (iv) treatment capacity of wastewater treatment plants and (v) generation and discharge of wastewater. Data on fresh water resources could be reported on RBD level only.

Keywords: Water statistics; River Basin Districts; River Basin District Subunits

Biography: My name is Miloslava Veselá, I have been working for the Czech Statistical Office for 16 years and last 6 years as a head of the Environmental Statistics Section.