The Plan of Protecting Ecological Environment during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) requires to establish the national standards system for environment, develop a batch of national environmental standards, and build the national database for environmental benchmarks.

Basic data underlies the development of environmental standards and the establishment of national environmental standards database. The rationality, accuracy, and reliability of data are directly related to the quality of work.

Based on relevant standards of environment informatization, metadata, and dataset, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment released China’s first batch of 16 sectoral standards for environment benchmarks, including HJ 1410.1-2025, Basic dataset of derivation of water quality criteria for aquatic organisms—Part 1: General principles. They are also the first group of data standards in the environment field.

The standards include one standard for general principles and 15 ones for the dataset of different kinds of aquatic organisms. These standards can be applied as a set with HJ 837-2022, Technical guideline for deriving water quality criteria for freshwater organisms, and HJ 1260-2022, Technical guideline for deriving water quality criteria for marine organisms (on trial).

The basic dataset sets the criterion for specific business, consisting of normative expression of necessary data element, which can guide the standardized collection of data and the standardization work of information system. Through implementing data governance from the source, the basic dataset also lays the foundation for data exchange and sharing, and big data application among information systems.

The standards provide guidelines on derivation criteria for aquatic organisms, and guarantee the high-quality data for relevant environmental research.