Water quality stations in Pays de la Loire

Origin of data These data come from the national Naïades database and produced by organisations (stakeholders) to meet a need (study, regulation, research...) and then stored in reference banks that can store data from several producers and meet several needs. It is therefore necessary to distinguish the concepts of the producer of a data and the reference bank from that data. The data producer and the stakeholders who carried out the measurements The “producer” of the data is the legal person (intervener) who commissioned the production of this data, one can refer to as the developer of the data. This producer may be distinct from the operator(s) who carried out the levy and the measure. The intervenor who took the withdrawal, who travelled to the field to carry out water withdrawals or surveys of species, is called the “collector”. The intervener who carried out the measure is identified as “Laboratory” for physicochemistry: indeed, measurements of concentrations can be carried out post-collection in an analytical laboratory. “Determinator” for hydrobiology: taxa counts are in some cases carried out post-collection using a microscope in a hydrobiology laboratory. Depending on the organisation, for a single measure there may be one or three actors playing the roles of producer, picker and determinator. Example: **In physicochemistry** A water agency will be able to commission analyses from a design office that will carry out the sampling and transmit the samples to a laboratory that will measure the expected concentrations. In this case: producer = water agency; collector = design office; laboratory = laboratory If this water agency is equipped with an analytical laboratory, it can itself carry out the sampling and measurements of concentrations. In this case: producer = water agency; collector = water agency; laboratory = water agency **In hydrobiology** A DREAL may carry out sampling and determinations of invertebrates on a daily basis producer = DREAL; picker = DREAL; determinator = DREAL A design office may carry out sampling and determinations on behalf of a water agency producer = water agency; collector = design office; laboratory = design office **Reference bank** The data exposed by Naïades are administered into databases called reference banks. It is the reference banks that guarantee: data quality (completeness, integrity, controls); data security (historisation, backups); The identification of a database as a reference bank is arbitrated governance bodies of the water information system. The operators of these reference banks may be the producers of the data stored in the reference banks but not necessarily. For example, the AFB fish base contains data produced by the AFB services but also by the fishing federations, or a water agency database may contain data produced in its own way or by departmental councils.