Implementing GISs for Coastal Planning:
Lessons Learned in British Columbia

Rosaline Canessa

Department of Geography, University of Victoria (CA)

British Columbia's extensive coastline encompasses innumerable islands, deep fiords, inlets and estuaries. From the main population centres in the south to the small communities which dot the coastline, coastal areas are critical to the social, cultural and economic fabric of British Columbia. Many of these communities have experienced an economic downturn from reductions in industrial forestry and commercial fishing, and are looking to alternative economic opportunities such as aquaculture, recreation, ecotourism, cultural tourism, cruise ship terminals, offshore oil and gas development, and offshore wind and wave energy. The resulting increased demands for coastal lands raises the potential for users conflicts within a natural environment internationally recognized for its rich biodiversity and scenic beauty.

Governance and management of coastal lands is the shared responsibility of the federal government, First Nations, provincial government and local government. However, it is the provincial government that is primarily responsible for issuing tenures on intertidal lands and subtidal lands within inland waters. These tenures are evaluated through a multi-agency referral process. In an effort to streamline and provide consistency to the referral process, the province of British Columbia is developing a series of coastal plans with the overall objective of enhancing sustainable economic development opportunities of coastal communities on an environmentally sustainable basis. The plans are intended as guidelines for issuing and reviewing tenures by recommending acceptable foreshore and nearshore uses including recreation and conservation values that should be reserved or withdrawn from tenure opportunities.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a key tool in the development of the coastal plans. Since the early 1990s, the province of British Columbia has implemented numerous major province-wide initiatives to survey, map and model coastal resources. These include a coastal resource and oil spill response atlas, aquaculture capability studies, biophysical and video surveys of the entire coastline, and physical ecological unit classification. These and other federal initiatives provide a comprehensive data resource for integrated coastal planning.

The Coast and Marine Planning Branch of the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management leads the development of the plans in coordination with the Decision Support Services Branch who manages and analyses coastal resource data, other agencies who have a mandate for a coastal planning and hold associated geographic databases, and the public who have a stake in the ourcome. To date, seven coastal plans have been or are in the process of being implemented and offer the opportunity to reflect on lessons learned with respect to user needs assessment, data issues, spatial analysis and public review.

The following table summarises the key challenges and opportunities of implementing GIS in coastal planning in British Columbia.

Implementation	Challenges	Opportunities
User Needs	- GIS analysts may be unaware of coastal planning process. - Coastal planners may be unaware or data availability and analytical potential of GIS	. - Develop a project plan between coastal planners and analysts. - Identify data requirements and data availability. - Review the project plan periodically.
Data	- 'Data fiefdoms' prevent data sharing. - Data captured over time may be inconsistent. - Agencies use different vertical data to define the coastline. - Local knowledge is valuable but questioned. - Cultural and commercial information may be sensitive for public release.	- Establish data sharing protocols and information networks. - Standardise data capture procedures - Implement an update cycle. - Build an integrated elevation model from upland to subtidal. - Validate local knowledge and incorporate into GIS. - Aggregate sensitive data spatially and by attributes.
Analysis	- Lack of GIS analyst resources requires coastal planners to extract aspatial data from spreadsheets. - Many queries are predictable and repetitive. - GIS is primarily used for query. Its full analytical power is not being utilised. - Implementation of the plan must be monitored to determine effectiveness.	- Provide coastal planners access to data and tools to conduct fundamental spatial queries. - Operationalise and automate standard queries. - Develop models for more advanced planning and environmental assessment analysis. - Implement a periodic spatial audit to determine consistency between plan recommendations and tenures issued.
Public Review	- Once published, paper maps are obsolete and relatively inaccessible. - The public are attuned to local discrepancies in data and maps. - The plan is a framework for local development and must be maintained current	- Publish the coastal plan on the Internet. - Distribute the coastal plan on a CD to local libraries and community groups. - Allow online access to geographic data for the public to query and generate their own maps. - Maintain the plan as a live document by facilitating continuous feedback from the public to update information.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Rob Paynter, Coastal and Marine Planning Branch, BC Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management and Carol Ogborne, Decision Support Services, BC Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management for assistance in preparing the presentation.