Spatial Data Infrastructure applied to the coastal zone

Darius Bartlett

Department of Geography, University College Cork, (IE)

Most coastal data and information are spatial, so applying GIS to coastal issues makes sense. GIS can support many coastal management tasks, including integration and analysis of larger and conceptually richer databases; improved sharing of information between communities, sectors, professions and stakeholders; quality control over data captured, and information products generated; modelling and simulation of coastal processes; non-invasive scenario testing and validation of alternative management options; enhanced decision-making, not least of all when a rapid response is required in the face of real or potential disaster; and improved visualisation and communication of concepts, information and ideas. However, to be effective, GIS technology requires the support of a more broadly based information infrastructure that can underpin information and communications technology (ICT) generally.

Since the mid-1990s, a growing number of global organisations, national and regional governments and, more recently, local administrations have sought to establish Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) of various sorts. Properly designed and implemented, an SDI provides technologies, communications protocols, standards, and regulatory frameworks to facilitate discovery of, access to, and efficient use and exchange of spatial data.

Most of these SDI initiatives, however, focus on the management of terrestrial data, and ignore coastal and off-shore regions. A number of reasons may be advanced for this, including a lack of sufficient awareness of the importance of coastal regions; and, especially, the fact that creating marine and coastal zone SDIs is a far from trivial challenge. Nonetheless, if these challenges can be overcome, incorporation of marine and coastal regions within global, national and regional spatial data infrastructures should bring substantial additional benefits of integration, standardisation and interoperability of technologies, enabling better policy formulation, monitoring and enforcement, often reaching beyond the coastal zone itself.

In this presentation, I will outline the origins and subsequent diffusion of the SDI concept; I shall examine the main components and ingredients that might make up a coastal SDI; I shall discuss some of the key features and challenges of the coastal zone that might make extending SDI off-shore particularly challenging; and I shall review a number of recent SDI initiatives, paying particular attention to their "coastal" components.