GIS in the Marine and Coastal Community

Jeanne Foust,

ESRI Inc. (US)

The marine and coastal community is a gathering place to share the work, tools, and methods of marine researchers and professionals that use GIS. The coastal zones are home to the majority of our global population, and the oceans and seas provide some of the earths most important and dynamic elements. As the tools marine practitioners use to gather data have become more sophisticated, so have the methods for management of the resulting information. Managing and mapping the 80 percent of our earth that is water presents a unique set of challenges.

From oceanography to hydrography, navigation to defense, from the coastal shoreline to the bathymetric bottom--marine GIS has been adapted and utilized to assist researchers and organizations in achieving their goals.

ESRI (Environmental System Research Institute) has been collaborating with coastal and marine GIS users in bringing enterprise GIS tools to that community. Additionally, collaborative efforts are under way to define the Arc GIS Data Model.

The paper and presentation will review ESRI efforts to bring GIS tools to the Marine and Coastal Community.