1. Background

1. BACKGROUND

The Water Research centre (WRc) has been appointed the lead organisation of the Topic Centre. This consists of a consortium of several European organisations which each have a representative on a Management Committee. This agrees the allocation of tasks and budget and members are accountable to the Chairman for the satisfactory prosecution of the Work Programme.

The Management Committee is chaired by Dr Tim Lack of WRc who also provide the services of a Technical Coordinator (Steve Nixon). The organisations represented on the Management Committee are:

• Austrian Working Group on Water (AWW - Austria)
• Centro de Estudios y Experimentacion de Obras Publicas (CEDEX - Spain)
• Flemish Environment Agency (VMM - Belgium, Flanders)
• Instituto da Agua (INAG - Portugal)
• International Office for Water (IOW - France)
• National Environmental Research Institute (NERI - Denmark)
• Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA - Norway)

There are a number of supporting organisations throughout Europe who also contribute to the Topic Centre's work programme carried out on behalf of the Agency. These include:

• Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG - Germany)
• Danish and Greenland Geological Survey (DGGU - Denmark)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA - Ireland)
• Faculdade de Ciêncas/Universidade de Lisboa (FC/UL - Portugal)
• Finnish Environment Agency (FEA - Finland)
• Institute of Hydrology (IH - UK)
• Institute for Inland Water Management and Wastewater Treatment (RIZA - Netherlands)
• Instituto para o Desenvolvimento de Novas Tecnologias (UNINOVA - Portugal)
• Instituto Superior Técnico/Centro de Valorização dos Recursos Minerais (IST/CVRM - Portugal)
• Instituto Tecnológico Geominero de España (ITGE - Spain)
• Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC - Portugal)
• Societe Wallone de Distribution d'Eau (SWDE - Belgium, Wallonia)
• CEDEX/ITGE provide the Deputy Leader of the Topic Centre (Alfredo Iglesias).

An international team of specialists coordinating the Topic Centre's work programme is based at WRc Medmenham including delegates from IOW, Jean Claude Nöel, and CEDEX, Conchita Marcuello who will be replaced at the end of December 1995 by Concha Lallana (also from CEDEX).