Coastal areas play a vital role for most European
countries, from the ecological, economical social and cultural point of
view. The high human pressure makes them very sensitive either for environmental,
or for social issues.
Since 1992, important intergovernmental organisations have been pointing
out the need of ensuring the sustainable development of such areas and
many national governments, as well as the EU has included it among their
priority objectives.
- Integrated Coastal Management
and Interdisciplinarity
- Integrated Coastal Management and Landscape
- Integrated Coastal Management and Geo-Information
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Integrated Coastal Management and Interdisciplinarity
The Integrated Coastal Management has been indicated as the main tool for achieving this objective, but the transfer of its principles into current management practices, is still far. In a European perspective, it is a very good chance for setting a common strategy, without coping with already consolidated localised schemes and, in this phase is essential a strict collaboration, to take advantage from any experience and avoid mistakes and overlapping.
In this perspective, the general objectives of ECO-IMAGINE
is fostering interdisciplinarity and building a structured knowledge in
ICM through the use of GI technologies, under the paradigm of coastal
landscape as unifying element.
In particular, the project aims to address some of the major issues related
to the elaboration and implementation of ICM programmes.
In the first place, ECO-IMAGINE is expected to foster an interdisciplinary
approach to coastal management in order to face one of its major constraints,
the traditional sectoral approach to coastal issues.
In most cases, this attitude is due to localised and short-term based
policies, that either lead to consider only specific and often conflicting
issues as priority, or do not foresee the consequences of this choice.
Instead of being considered in its comprehensiveness, in the past Coastal
Management has been sometimes identified with coastal engineering, that
means all the interventions and functional or protective infrastructures
along the coastal area, to protect it against erosion, natural hazards
or to allow its development. Though basic and very demanding, coastal
engineering is, as it is the case of environmental protection or tourism
development, only one part of ICM, hence the need to integrate all the
skills that have a role in the management of the coastal area, above all
with the ones more linked to the human aspects of the area, such as social
sciences, history, landscape architecture, etc., that have often been
considered less relevant because less evident in the short term.
In this case, an interdisciplinary approach is expected to lead to a double
advantage: it benefits of the wide experience developed in the field of
coastal engineering and gives it a sustainability oriented attitude. Moreover,
the inclusion of the social and communication sciences as active part
in coastal management processes, helps the participation of the stakeholders
(local administrator, enterprises, etc.), as well as of the citizens,
in the decision and management processes.
At this regard, it is important to point out that ECO-IMAGINE does not
aim to create a "super-expert", competent in every discipline,
but to give an opportunity to different experts and to increase their
attitude to interact and to better co-ordinate their efforts in the frame
of complex operational teams.
Another relevant problem that ECO-IMAGINE is expected to
address is the lack of structured knowledge about coastal areas,
by fostering the establishment of a science based, interdisciplinary and
with an adequate technological support, data collection, management and
policy.
As a matter of fact, in such complex areas, a general information framework
is an essential element for the elaboration of a management strategy.
On the contrary, information is often available only according with the
single priority objectives (i.e. in areas characterised by high human
pressure or by profit-oriented objectives, the assessment of ecological
features of an area may be lacking or not up to date), and data comparison
and interoperability is in this way more difficult. Often short term or
self contained projects can not afford the collection and the elaboration
of high quality information, with the result that the available data are
not trustful or not suitable to be used for other purposes.
Integrated Coastal Management and Landscape
A further key element of ICM is the integration between
human and natural issues of the coastal areas, expressed by the landscape.
This definition, become part of, and enlarged in the 6th Framework Programme,
refers to any trace of human activity impressed over the natural environment.
Indeed, natural and human sciences usually find in the landscape their
meeting point.
Coastal landscape is above all a multidisciplinary field, both under the
scientific and under the practical point of view, where different skills
are actually bound to interact. Beyond being an important resource for
coastal areas, it joints the features of different environments, the sea
and the catchments, and it is characterised by high diversity either biological,
or cultural or socio-economic. It is therefore a very suitable paradigm
for really multidisciplinary ICM initiatives.
Integrated Coastal Management and Geo-Information
Upon the aforesaid conditions Geo-Information is a key
element of knowledge and GIS (Geographical Information Systems)
are actually useful tools.
Besides the basic capability of GIS of joining information and territorial
features, of giving a spatial placement to data not suitable to conventional
representations, and of creating thematic maps, the flexibility of this
tool proves to be essential. As a matter of fact, the capability of adapting
to dynamic situations, comply with the need of continuous evolution that
characterises ICM.
In particular this consists of the possibility of
- integrating information from various sources and related to different fields. The effective interdisciplinarity and interoperability of data and information are a priority objective in order to build an updated and comprehensive outline of the situation, to integrate observation and data acquisition from the component projects and to share information
- creating not only a mere integrated data bank, but collecting, elaborating, updating according with new inputs and finally representing different kinds of information. In this way an added value is given to rough data, further on increased by the possibility to adapt the output format to comply with the skills and the operational needs of the final users.
- Downstream, ensuring the transfer of information among local stakeholders, decision makers, and ICM experts. Indeed, this process is a valuable support to the management. As a matter of fact, on one hand, the coastal knowledge and the awareness of related issues among the stakeholders and the local communities is increased, on the other hand, it is easier to include their needs and suggestions into an ICM programme.
On this base, ECO-IMAGINE aims as well to put in touch
ICM and coastal landscape with the state of art of GI technologies and
GIS, meant as powerful tools to be exploited at the best.
In this perspective, the need of a continuous transfer of knowledge from
the scientific environment to decision makers and stakeholders and vice
versa is self evident as it is the need of a tool, such as the GIS, capable
to continuously collect inputs from different sources, to elaborate and
integrate them with existing information, and, finally, to create effective
representations