The United Kingdom Environmental Observation Framework (UK-EOF) is a 5 year programme established to identify and address the issues surrounding environmental observations made for and by the UK. The framework seeks to provide a cost effective mechanism to work in partnership across government, the devolved administrations, agencies and the voluntary sector to make best use of expertise and resources in support of national and international goals.
UK-EOF has the overall aim of shaping the UK's capability to 'facilitate the ongoing environmental evidence required to understand the changing natural environment, thus guiding current and future environmental management, policy, science and innovation priorities for economic benefit and quality of life'.
The scope covers all environmental observation/monitoring activities done for or by the UK. It will enable funders and users to:
- see the entire observation/monitoring portfolio,
- understand the motivations of its various components, and will
- improve data accessibility and quality.
To achieve the UK-EOF outcomes and deliverables, activities have been broken down into five major but highly inter-dependent workstreams:
The UK Environmental Observation Framework has been developed in response to the long standing and complex issues concerning monitoring and observations. Full details of the initiative can be found in the ERFF Report 05 - UK Environmental Observational Framework.
The UK-EOF Delivery Plan sets out details of how the programme and each workstream will be delivered. Due to the dynamic nature of the UK-EOF Programme the Delivery Plan remains a working document of the UK-EOF Management Group. It will therefore be updated periodically as the programme progresses.
Bob Watson, the Chief Scientist of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is the overall UK-EOF Champion whilst the Management Group is chaired by Ian Davidson of Defra.
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Further information
UK-EOF has grown out of earlier work by ERFF to address a well-recognised need for better coordination of UK environment monitoring. In 2006 ERFF commissioned a review of the current state of environmental monitoring in the UK. The output from this was ERFF Report 02: Strategic analysis of UK environmental monitoring activity.
ERFF set up an Environmental Monitoring Strategy Board to oversee the implementation of the report's recommendations, and from April 2008 this became known as the UK-EOF Management Group.