The user segment addressed by SAGE are the various administrations in Europe in charge of implementing and reporting on the European directives, namely the WFD and STS. This user segment can be divided into three hierarchical levels: (1) the European / international level, (2) the national level (member states) and (3) the local level.
The European users (e.g. the European Commission and the European Environmental Agency) mainly rely on information delivered by the member states and in most cases do not create the information by themselves.
On national level SAGE users are typically environmental agencies. They have responsibilities for national environmental policy with direct contributions and outputs to water policy and soil policy. It means they are ensuring that obligations from European documents like WFD or SDI are transformed into national legislation. Usually they are the national focal point for the EEA and play intermediate role among national activities and European policy making.
The regional users are very often implementing organisations. They are the main targets for SAGE services as they have the legal mandate and the operational budgets to create and apply environmental information for mapping, monitoring and planning purposes.
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