Within the framework of this project, a Demonstrator for a Transnational Information Service will be developed, focusing on a regional European Sea (Wadden Sea), and being a model for other environmental valuable regions within the EC. During the development and the dissemination of the Demonstrator, representative organizations of other European cross-bordering environmental regions will be closely involved.

Demonstrator for the Wadden Sea
The Demonstrator for a Transnational Wadden Sea Information Service will result in a transnational network of Wadden Sea related web sites, providing better overview, indexes and back ground information on GIS-datasets, thematic and other maps, and data source holders in the countries around the Wadden Sea. The focus is on GIS-datasets, but with the demonstrator an operational and transnational infrastructure between public data source holders is initiated, that can be expanded with other types of data & information over the years.

Because it is also a challenge to interest and to make general public more aware of the Wadden Sea, its nature and its management framework, a second Demonstrator product will be prepared as a multi-media CD-ROM publication. This will be a popular-scientific multi-media product, containing an electronic atlas with selected thematic maps and extensive descriptive information and data, including photographs, drawings, animations and sounds (kind of electronic encyclopaedia) to illustrate and to explain the Wadden Sea area, with its valuable ecosystem, biological diversity, dynamics of tides, winds, waves, morphology, winds, human activities, management and policies.

The main objectives are:

• To improve overview, availability and access of public environmental Wadden Sea data & information
• To realize more appropriate coordination and tuning of data-formats and data-distribution, both through development of the Wadden Sea Information Service on Internet and the Multi-media atlas on CD-ROM
• To develop a successful public-private partnership between public information source holders and private partners
• To promote and demonstrate WADSIS public-private cooperation as option/model for other European environmental valuable or threatened regions, like estuaries, regional seas, lakes, and rivers

• the WADSIS concept in general
• suggestions for the WADSIS Information Service
• dissemination of the WADSIS concept within Europe
• Applicability of the WADSIS concept for other environmental valuable regions within Europe