Welcome and Conference Introduction
Framework and Aim of CoastGIS'03

Emanuele Roccatagliata

on behalf of CoastGIS '03 Committees

The fifth edition of CoastGIS is a new step of this initiative that from its beginning has strongly grown up thanks to the effort of its organising group and is today capable of addressing not only specialists but as well a larger audience of users in the field.

GI is a basic input and background for the Earth knowledge and GIS are powerful tools available to administrators and decision makers. They can be strongly effective also for coastal areas, a crucial action field for our future, but for their successful implementation a collaboration among people with different competence and commitment is needed in the frame of agreements between the various levels of decision.

One of the aims of CoastGIS is to support this process of transfer of knowledge and exchange of experience between scientists and between scientists and users as regards all matters of coastal planning, monitoring and control.
The organisation of CoastGIS, jointly cared by GISIG and ICCOPS, is itself a sign of this concurrent approach from different origins toward a common objective and results as an output of the thematic network ICAM-GI that has been promoted by our two associations to support the co-operation of the two different worlds of Integrated Coastal Management and GI technology.

The title that has been chosen for this edition of the conference is "Integrating Information in Coastal Zone Management" because of the importance of data and of a proper Data Infrastructure to exploit at the best the availability of data and its potentiality to create useful information.

The hope is that the conference and its structure and development, though necessarily very concentrated, will be able with its sessions, posters, exhibition and field trip of being really of occasion for meeting and discussing, between people who are already friends but as well between people that until now have shared only a scientific and professional interest. If yes, it will be a good demonstration of usability that is matter of data and of GI but is a becoming as well a challenge for symposia.

The Local Committee wishes to thanks the permanent Scientific Committee for the continuous and fruitful collaboration in the various steps of the organisations of this events, as well as the sponsor and the exhibitors who have trusted this initiative. Finally, we hope that Coastgis'03 becomes a good occasion to better know this region, its coast and its sea, being not only an occasion of professional enrichment but as well a pleasant personal experience.