The activities of CEMDS are generally non profit. They focus on selected areas of competence, which are:
- Financing, Organization and Management
- Institutions, Strategies and Policies
- Environmental Planning and Technologies
Its services range from coordination of fundamental research with its cooperation partners, aiming at joining expertise, to research based applied decision support and consulting based and implementation activities to test and apply research results in practice.
Thereby, CEMDS is focusing on the following sectors:
- Water resources and river basin management
- Water supply, wastewater and sanitation management
- Solid waste management
It also had worked in the transportation sector.