1) Mission

EMWIS is  an information and knowledge exchange tool between the Euro Mediterranean partnership countries, necessary for the implementation of the Action Plan defined at the Euro Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Local Water Management, Turin, 1999-10-18/19. 

The EMWIS aims to: 

Facilitate the access to information Develop the sharing of information Elaborate common outputs and cooperation programs

on the know-how in the water field

2) Targeted users

"Access to information that is available through this information exchange system should be open to all people interested in water management". (Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Water Management, Marseille, 1996-11-25/26).

3) The (five) most significant concepts:

1. Nature: It is an information system
   

2. Topic: The know-how in the water sector
   

3. Geographical domain: It is Euro-Mediterranean. Above all, EMWIS is concerned with the information available in the 27 countries, signatories of the Barcelona Convention (1995): the 15 countries of the European Union and the 12 Mediterranean partners
   

4. The basic structure: The information is distributed. The word distributed means that the information remains at the level of the providers and is not centralized in a common data base
   

5. An information of quality: The available information has been approved. Only the information sources granting a quality seal by EMWIS managers will be accessible through this system. The information quality, updating and reliability will be guaranteed by each information source.