Strategic monitoring for the European Water Framework Directive

This article first reviews the principal monitoring requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union (EU) and assesses how contaminant monitoring may fit into a risk-assessment approach. In this context, we show the limited ability of conventional trace-contaminant-monitoring methods to fulfil all of the WFD requirements. We then clearly define and exemplify the roles and the functions of a new set of monitoring tools, using three case studies based on datasets that we obtained during a field trial in the River Meuse as part of the Screening methods for Water data InFormaTion (SWIFT-WFD) project in support of implementing the WFD.