Risk assessment process

SEPA's WFD monitoring system is operational and risk-driven. It focuses monitoring resources on those water bodies identified as being at risk of failing to meet their WFD or other protected area objectives. In this way, the system can establish the status of those bodies and help inform the targeting of any measures work that may be needed.

New risk assessment tools are being developed to assess the impacts of human activities on ecological quality. One of the functions of our classification monitoring network is to provide data to check that the tools we are using are the most sensitive to the pressures on the environment, and to help in refining the tools.