Spatial Analysis for Coastal Zone Management: beyond GIS

K. Fedra (1), A. Abdel-Rehim (2)

(1) Environmental Software & Services GMBH, Gumpoldskirchen (AT)
(2) Center for Environment and Development for Arab Region and Europe, Cairo (EG)

The coastal zones of the Mediterranean are undergoing rapid development with growing and conflicting demands on the natural resources, and at the same time subject to often irreversible degradation of these resources and thus the very basis for development. Water resources and the related land use issues are a key element for the sustainable development of coastal regions. They illustrate the dependency of the usually dynamic and fast growing coastal areas on their resource catchment.

SMART (Sustainable Management of scarce resources in the coastal zone) is an INCO-MED project under the sixth framework program that brings together partners from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Italy, France, Portugal, and Austria, with case studies in each of the Mediterranean partner countries. The project explores methods and tools for long-term policy analysis and strategic decision support for integrated coastal development with special emphasis on water resources and land use.

The approach is based on a multi-sectoral integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining advanced tools of quantitative systems engineering including GIS, remote sensing, and numerical simulation models, combined with methods of environmental, socio-economic and policy impact assessment using rule-based expert systems technology and interactive multi-criteria decision support methods. The underlying paradigm change leads from static spatial objects to complex, dynamic functional and interacting objects as the unit of analysis. Integrating GIS with dynamic, spatially distributed simulation models, expert systems, and explicit DSS tools advances the state of the art in spatial analysis beyond GIS towards new tools for sustainable development planning.

The main innovative elements of this project include the integration of advanced spatially distributed and dynamic numerical simulation and optimization tools with GIS and socio-economic elements through rule-based expert system technology for qualitative analysis; the explicit consideration of multiple criteria and conflicting objectives, uncertainty, and the necessary political trade-offs and adaptive strategies; the direct involvement of end users including the concerned public through the use, inter alia, of the Internet and the support of remote clients; the smooth integration of existing information resources and data through a distributed client-server architecture and a common framework of indicators for sustainable development; the integration of technical analysis with educational, awareness-building elements for a broad target audience, aiming at the empowerment of a broad range of actors and local stake holders. The direct integration in existing institutional structures including governmental, NGO, and academic institutions as well as the concerned citizen at large is designed to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project results.

To provide the quantitative basis and feedback for any socio-economic and policy analysis, a set of readily available industry standard numerical simulation models are used to describe land use change and the water resources situation in each of the case study areas. The analytical tools are based on GIS technology and remote sensing data, cellular automata using a rule-based expert system, and classical water resources and hydrological models, based on the conservation laws (mass, momentum), using (partial) differential equations to describe dynamic water budgets in space. The integrated set of tools includes:

Together with the underlying GIS and remote sensing data the model system can describe any aspect of the water resources system including demand-supply patterns and water quality aspects. Driven by demographic change, changing land use patterns technological and economic change and thus the economics of water use and supply, scenarios of coastal zone development and resource management are developed, aggregated into a set of indicators, and subjected to a final discrete multi-criteria optimization step.