The CCE collaborates with National Focal Centres (NFCs) to support effect-based, integrated assessment of European air pollution abatement policy alternatives. NFCs are institutes that are responsible for producing the national data on critical loads/levels and maps for inclusion in the European maps in accordance with the Mapping Manual guidelines. The particular responsibilities of the NFCs are:
- collection and archiving of data needed to obtain maps in accordance with the Manual guidelines and in collaboration with the CCE,
- communication of national mapping procedures (data, formats, models, maps) to the CCE,
- provision of written reports on the methods and models used to obtain national maps,
- organisation of training measures for national experts in collaboration with the CCE,
- making the necessary provisions to obtain national maps in accordance with the resolution and standards (measurement units, periodicity, etc.) described in the Manual,
- collaborating with the CCE to permit assessment of the methods applied in order to perform multinational mapping exercises (e.g. using GIS) and model comparisons,
- updating the mapping manual as appropriate, in collaboration with the Task Force on Mapping and the CCE.
The map below presents the location of the NFCs which collaborate with the CCE. The address of the NFC can be viewed by clicking on the black circle in the map. The colours yellow and grey for the countries refer to the status of critical load data. For the countries coloured in yellow the respective NFCs delivered critical load data in response to the latest Call for Data (2015-2017). For the countries coloured in grey the critical loads were calculated by the CCE based on the European background database (EU-DB) because the NFCs did not deliver critical load data.
