Framework and aim of CoastGIS'03

Emanuele Roccatagliata

GISIG and ICCOPS (IT)

To open the technical sessions of the CoastGIS'03 Conference is a demanding honour, as it is for me a great satisfaction to be in the programme just after the welcome by the Municipality of Genova.
The participation of our Municipality, to which I give my thanks as one of the main sponsors of CoastGIS with the European Commission, is a meaningful demonstration of the importance that both sea/coast and cartography have for this town. Cartography: in the past Genoese cartographers were well known and as far as the coast the historians tell us that the name itself "Genua" would stay for coastal outlet of the inland or for "elbow" along the coast, as it is for Geneva on her lake. You see, coast and sea are reason and root of Genova as town.

CoastGIS has grown up from its beginning thanks to the effort and to the care received by the scientists that created it eight years ago and today can aim at being not only a scientific event for specialists but as well an opportunity for administrators and technical operators. That is to say to users.
Indeed cartography and representation has always been among the main ways for the operational knowledge of Earth and today GIS are tested technical tools, powerful instruments that science has let available to administrations and decision makers.
We are convinced that any effective support that is offered in this direction -a better decision making- is very important. The coasts are the most pressured and critical zones of the world and if they are not able to cope with coastal problems they won't be able to cope with the world problems at all. This is a general consideration that involves us as citizens, not only a biased point of view.
On the other hand if a correct and efficient relationship between coastal management and GI processing (as implemented by GIS) is established, a powerful help will be given to solve coastal problems. To do such kind of operation is always a matter of linking different institutions and bodies, i.e. a problem of linking people and of making people aware of the work of other people, helping them to achieve mutual knowledge and acquaintance. We think this is a main point of CoastGIS and a way of making it more and more important and useful.

The process of territorial knowledge is a major step of the overall decision making process, strictly linked to planning and to environmental monitoring and control, even if the awareness of that link is not always as diffused as we think it should be. The effort of GI operators should be then of looking for and of operating towards a better involvement of users, not actual users but as well new potential users.
User involvement and user link is just the objective we are pursuing from several years and it is the rationale of the thematic networks we are promoting. Among others, the ICAM-GI network, jointly promoted by GISIG and ICCOPS in the frame of which we have launched a new project for conferences and training courses. This new project ECO-IMAGINE will start beginning of next year and will create a panel of scientists and research centres about GI and Integrated Coastal Management.
There is another and maybe more direct demonstration of such approach to link and involve users, just the collaboration between GISIG and ICCOPS, a way on one hand of offering to Integrated Coastal Management a GIS support, on the other hand of giving to GI technology a meaningful test field and work environment. You see, always a matter of making closer different worlds.

Another consideration I would like to add: more and more data is available and a properly addressed and efficient GI approach can help to transform data into information, capturing then the interest and the trust of users and you know this is the starting point of effective collaboration.
The conference gives then great importance to Data and to Data Infrastructure and its title is "Integrating Information in Coastal Zone Management", a theme that has been chosen after a discussion in the Scientific Committee.

Moreover a conference that aims at creating a meeting point must offer an occasion to differently addressed people: to enlarge and enrich the programme is one of the reasons of the parallel sessions and of the posters. We invite then you to exploit the possibility offered by the posters (more than 30) and by the exhibition.

We hope that you will have a good CoastGIS. We have made a big effort for this conference that would have been not possible without a strong collaboration of the permanent Scientific Committee. For this reason we as Local Committee address to the Scientific Committee a sincere thanks. Now we hope that this effort will be awarded by the success of this conference that we would be proud of transmitting to the people of CoastGIS'05.
After the Scientific Committee I do have to thank the sponsors of CoastGIS'03. They are institutional bodies such as administrations and research centres, either Italian and international, as well as technical companies. You see them in the exhibition area. Neither I can forget the outstanding panel of scientific organisations patrons of the initiative, present also in this opening session.

Finally we hope as well that you will have a good stay in Genova and in Liguria and that you will take the conference as an occasion of knowing better our land (and sea!). That can be also a good opportunity with regard to your professional interest.

Welcome to Genova!