Support to Water Statistics Production and Ecosystem Accounting

Description

This contract will be divided into two lots: — Lot 1: the main objective of lot 1 is high quality support to Eurostat's annual collections of water statistics throughout the production cycle. The tenderer shall contribute to the preparation, smooth execution and follow-up of the data collection exercise, which is aimed at achieving high quality data sets of European water statistics; — Lot 2: the main objective is support on ecosystem accounting, in particular, preparation of methodological documents on ecosystem accounting for expert discussions, development of workflows and GIS (or other IT) tools to build ecosystem accounts and validate produced data, and providing methodological advice on an ad-hoc basis, to advance the implementation of ecosystem accounts in the EU in a well-coordinated and methodologically robust way. Lot 1: Support to Water Statistics Production The tender will cover maximum two periods of 2 years, each covered by a separate contract. The services to be purchased for the entire contract period are estimated to cover 416 person-days. As detailed in point 1.4.2.3 of the tender specifications, there are five tasks as follows: 1. methodological support; 2. support to the data collection; 3. data validation; 4. gap-filling and data analysis; 5. maintenance of the data collection system. The aims of these tasks are: — Task 1: maintenance of the Water Statistics Manual and of methodological reports for reporting countries; — Task 2: to support the collection of national and regional water statistics, before, during and after the data collection phase; — Task 3: to thoroughly validate the statistical data reported by European countries according to validation rules agreed; — Task 4: to increase the value of the set of reported data through the filling of gaps and the discussion/development and calculation of indicators; — Task 5: to give advice for the maintenance and seamless functioning of the water statistics production systems based on their monitoring and analysis. Lot 2: Support for Ecosystem Accounting The tender will cover maximum three periods of 1 year, each covered by a separate contract. The services to be purchased for the entire contract period are estimated to cover 725 person-days. As detailed in point 1.4.2.3 of the tender specifications, there are three tasks as follows: 1. methodological support to Eurostat and Member States; 2. business solutions and procedures to build ecosystem accounts in Member States and at EU level; 3. support to regular data collections. The aims of these tasks are: — Task 1: • provide lead support to the Task Force on ecosystem accounting to achieve its objectives as described above; • support Eurostat in finalising the methodological guidance for the new legal module; • provide timely, methodologically correct and practically applicable support on the compilation of ecosystem accounts to practitioners in EU Member States; • support Eurostat in methodological work on ecosystem accounting in international fora (e.g. the UN, UNECE); — Task 2: • continue supporting countries with business solutions that facilitate the development and production of ecosystem accounts including the automation of data preparation and data processing and ETL workflows to the extent possible, focusing on ecosystem services accounts, in physical and monetary terms and including both the supply and the use side of the accounts, in line with the legal module and SEEA EA framework; • enhance documentation of the business solutions to facilitate their use. • provide training to countries in using the business solutions and default data sources. • maintain the existing solutions implemented under the previous support contract and update them to new methodologies, data sources, models and new IT technologies and platforms, as needed; — Task 3: to support Eurostat in the collection of ecosystem accounts and to provide high quality, accurate and timely support for the data processing and validation.