Characterisation of Risks to Groundwaters for the 2nd River Basin Cycle

Characterisation of risk is a requirement of Article 5 and Annex II of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Specifically, “Member States shall carry out an initial characterisation of all groundwater bodies to assess their uses and the degree to which they are at risk of failing to meet the objectives for each groundwater body under Article 4…… Following this initial characterisation, Member States shall carry out further characterisation of those groundwater bodies or groups of bodies which have been identified as being at risk in order to establish a more precise assessment of the significance of such risk and identification of any measures to be required...”