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Joint Research Centre – European Commission

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission’s science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent scientific advice and support to EU policy. Amongst others, JRC’s expertise covers the fields of water, agriculture, energy and development policy research, serving various Commission DGs: DEVCO, AGRI, ENV, CLIMA, ENER, ECHO etc.

The JRC supports numerous pieces of European legislation regarding water. This includes research on water quality and quantity, contamination, irrigation, and preservation of marine and freshwater ecosystems. In addition, it fosters sustainable management of water resources within Europe and on a global scale through the sharing of best practices and technology transfer. Recently, a large internal project addressing the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems nexus was initiated pooling the expertise of various disciplines within the JRC to address the future nexus challenges, focusing on Europe and Africa.

The JRC’s long expertise on modelling of hydrological processes with its core in house model LISFLOOD, recently evolved to LISFLOOR-EPIC, which has been use for several EC’s Impact Assessments and is used in operational flood (EFAS, GLOFAS) and drought pre diction (EDO) systems under the Copernicus Emergency Services programme. Within the field of water, energy and agriculture, the JRC provides independent scientific and technical advice and support to EU policies such as the Water Framework Directive, the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, and new initiatives such as the Bioeconomy.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/joint-research-centre_en