Coastal and Marine Geospatial Technologies

Within the framework of the SYSCOLAG pluridisciplinary research programme on ICZM in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France, we propose an ISO-19115-compliant metadata service to share informational resources. Each resource is described using a metadata form. Each form consists of textually and spatially controlled terms which are stored in a single DBMS (Postgres and Postgis). The graphical user-interfaces contain the expert knowledge (thematic and spatial ontologies) and include a mapping service (SVG and OGC-compliant WMS-WFS) that allows spatial and thematic queries to be addressed to the metadata service.

The Australian Marine Jurisdiction is one of the largest in the world and if ratified by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, just over half of Australia’s land mass will be below the sea. Australia has national and international responsibility to manage and sustain the marine environment. This chapter describes an initiative being undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA) to develop an Australian Marine Spatial Information System (AMSIS). The chapter outlines the progress made to date with this development. AMSIS will accurately locate marine features including interests and rights over the Australian Marine Jurisdiction. Arrangements are being made with other custodians of spatial boundary information so that AMSIS will become an accepted source of integrated information. In developing and implementing AMSIS, GA is working closely with many agencies to assist them produce or validate/correct spatial information and to determine the best way to capture and provide access to reliable information in a manner that is consistent with current principles for data management and spatial data infrastructure development. AMSIS is being developed as a decision support system to support regional marine planning, management of marine operations including regulation and enforcement of legislation, and industry development, especially in the identification of interests overlapping or adjacent to the annual offshore petroleum acreage releases. The project is being undertaken in close collaboration with key stakeholders including the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, The National Oceans Office and the Royal Australian Navy Hydrographic Service as well as other Australian Government departments that have interests in Australia’s marine jurisdiction.

The Lagos lagoon is the largest lagoon in West Africa and empties into the Atlantic Ocean through Lagos harbour. In recent years however, overpopulation, sand filling of the wetlands for property development and dumping of industrial and domestic wastes have adversely affected the health of the Lagos lagoon. This chapter discusses the need to establish SDI for the Lagos Lagoon stressing that the SDI will assist in planning and development in and around the lagoon. It emphasizes the need for standardization of datasets, development of a metadata bank and a clearinghouse.

The Marine Irish Digital Atlas (MIDA) is a web-based resource which provides visualisation, information and data on Ireland’s coastal and marine environment. The development from 2002 to 2005 highlighted a number of difficulties related to data identification, sourcing, acquisition and licensing costs. In Ireland, the MIDA is one of a number of web-based initiatives related to the public provision of marine related data and information, and as such, it follows a set of open standards in order to facilitate harmonisation between these systems. The experience gained is of relevance in the context of the development of the Irish Spatial Data Infrastructure.

The need for a Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI) as part of a national or regional framework has been recognized widely. However, as reported for example by Longhorn (2003), few nations have progressed significantly towards this goal. This chapter re-examines the implementation of CSDI and what it means to data custodians and end users. It provides a practical example of how the UK is creating a topographical baseline of data that includes inter-operable data from the Ordnance Survey (land) and the UK Hydrographic Office (sea) as part of achieving its own data infrastructure.

The use of geospatial data in the marine environment is still a small “cottage” industry when compared to that on land, especially in the UK. This is partly due to a crucial lack of knowledge about what public or commercial sourced data exists, how to get hold of it, how much is digital and what it would cost. The current situation does not meet either Government expectations or that of data providers and users. External drivers such as the UK Government sponsored Marine Stewardship Report (“Safeguarding our Seas”), the EU Directives for ICZ Management and the Water Framework Directive are exerting increasing pressure to resolve the situation. Coupled with that is the growing need amongst data users for wider dissemination, digital outputs, data exchange agreements, licensing of data/information, interoperability and e-business. This presents an interesting challenge for organisations like the UKHO. This presentation explores how the UKHO and other data providers are unlocking the data “treasure chest” and the move towards the development of a marine geospatial data information framework (MSDI).

ECO-IMAGINE is a group of eight conferences and training courses on ICM and GI/GIS. Four Working Groups has been created to address the main features in the field of ICM and GI: “Building Coastal Knowledge”, “Coastal Governance, Planning and Design”, “The Waterfront Management”, “Geo-spatial Technologies”. ECO-IMAGINE has two general conferences to introduce and summarise objectives and Working Groups, three thematic conferences and three Training Courses. An effective network building and generation of added value is ensured by the web-site that implements a Virtual Permanent Conference as discussion forum and reference thematic repository.

The Atlantic Coastal Zone Information Steering Committee (ACZISC) has embarked on the first phase in the development of a geospatial data infrastructure in Atlantic Canada termed COINAtlantic. Many workshops have been held to date to refine the concept and to test it for acceptance with both potential users and data providers. A consensus was achieved at the third workshop to the effect that COINAtlantic would be an important component of an Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) Community of Practice in Atlantic Canada. The chapter provides a brief history of COIN, a summary of the results of the first three workshops and presents evidence of the technical and organizational readiness of the stakeholder community for COINAtlantic. This status report has been updated to document progress in the development of COINAtlantic to the beginning of 2009.

This chapter describes the role of the coastal dunes in the context of coastal erosion and presents the possibility of making complex analyses on coastal dunes presence and state using a geodatabase, developed within a national research program. Data and parameters, such as littoral uses, defenses and coastal dune features, have been organized in the same geodatabase structure. This national homogeneous approach makes this project unique for Southern Mediterranean coasts. Applying this approach to data gathered from the Emilia-Romagna and Southern Veneto regions highlighted the complex analyses possibilities and their implication for coastal management and monitoring.

As the largest archipelagic nation with thousands of islands, the establishment of infrastructure for marine and coastal spatial data is indispensable. Six technical working groups have been formed as a component of spatial data information management in the Marine and Coastal Resources Management Project (MCRMP). The groups’ responsibilities are to determine the standard of spatial database, the data clearinghouse and custodianship among stakeholders and improvement of human resource. After the discussion with stakeholders, some standards have been established and some agreements have been reached to be implemented in the further stage of national spatial data infrastructure.

The accident and sink of the tank ship Prestige, that occurred offshore of the Galicia coast (northwest Spain) on November 2002, caused a large oil spill with important ecological and economic consequences for the Galician and Cantabrian littoral. Different data sets obtained through monitoring of the oil spill by over flight observation, satellite data, measurements from buoys and modelling of oceanic parameters (e.g. temperature, salinity, density, pH, fluorescence, dissolved oxygen) have been integrated into a Geographic Information System (GIS) for their access and study. The use of this GIS will allow the civil authorities and the scientific community to manage and to generate thematic cartography and to perform spatial and geostatistical analysis of the data in order to better analyze these marine pollution scenarios.

In Sicily, the main Italian island, both intensive and extensive systems of culture of euryhaline fish species have been developed. In Sicily in 1998, the production was 200 t, 20% of the national produce. In order for aquaculture to be successful, activity must not cause unacceptable modifications in water quality or interfere with other uses, such as tourism or industry of coastal areas. The aspects are extensively evaluated in studies on impacts of fish farms along the coastal zones. In this chapter we wish to delineate structure and problems of aquaculture in Sicily, emphasizing developments, especially of offshore aquaculture and its socioeconomic role.

Shore platform erosion is considered to be a driving mechanism for cliff recession on many rocky coasts and a threat to the stability of cliff defence structures, yet the spatial pattern of platform erosion, as well as the rate of lowering, is poorly documented. Measurements based on techniques such as the Micro-Erosion Meter or portable laser scanner, though highly accurate for short time scales and specific locations, are difficult to extrapolate in space and time. They also fail to measure meso-scale changes such as block removal. This chapter describes and illustrates a photogrammetric method of quantifying spatial and temporal changes on shore platforms.

Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) requires clearly defined geographical regions. Geospatial tools in geographic information software provide systematic approaches for defining coastal zones and the limits of a nested hierarchy of management zones or units. In this chapter, a comprehensive set of approaches and their implementation are presented using several tools and data such as proximity, topography/bathymetry, watershed analysis, ecotones, hidrogeological data, cultural and administrative features as well as climate, sea surface temperature, ocean color and biodiversity distributions and condition. A simple, illustrative example is provided for the coastal zone of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

This chapter examines the potential for using archival colour vertical aerial photography to map the spatial location, distribution, extent and changes over time in weedmat coverage for the Ythan estuary, North East Scotland, UK. Archival colour aerial photography scanned into a computer, and processed using image processing techniques resulted in a series of mosaiced images for visual interpretation of the location and extent of weedmats for each year of photography selected. Input of the imagery into a Geographical Information System (GIS) enabled the derivation of maps showing change and quantitative estimates of the areal coverage of macro-algal weedmats for each year. It is concluded that macro-algal weedmats can easily be differentiated on colour aerial photography from background mud and sand deposits, but it is not possible to reliably separate individual macro-algal species from each other, or to distinguish weedmat densities without the availability of additional co-incident field data.

This chapter describes an ongoing research project, “YthanView”, to provide online access and visualization tools for geospatial data and information characterizing the Ythan Estuary in northeast Scotland. The project addresses requirements for new and innovative ways to store, catalogue, access, and visualize a wide range of terrestrial and coastal data and information for a small estuarine environment, and to make it more widely available for teaching, research and consultancy activities. Building upon work currently being undertaken at the University of Aberdeen, to facilitate wider access to estuarine data and information resources, the project also considers ways to introduce undergraduate and postgraduate students to coastal and estuarine fieldwork, to reduce staff/student contact hours, and to establish closer links with academic research and consultancy as part of its aims. Several examples illustrate the different ways in which visualization can be used to display, explore, and communicate geospatial information for an estuarine environment.

The Wadden Sea is the shallow sedimentary coastal zone of the south-eastern North Sea. It is a highly dynamic system where shorelines are continuously changed by wind, waves, currents and tides. These morphodynamics were surveyed at the island of Sylt which is located in the northern Wadden Sea. The base of this long-term study is a series of high-resolution aerial photographs from 1928 to 2003. The analyses of the georeferenced aerial photographs and the quantification of shoreline changes were conducted with a Geographic Information System (GIS).

The northern part of the island of Sylt turned out to be the most interesting area where different coastal processes can be observed. The west shore of northern Sylt is subject to severe erosion as it is exposed to strong westerly winds, a consistent westerly wave wash and strong currents. Therefore, a considerable coastal retreat was observed here. In contrast to this, the north shore turned out to be an accumulation area. However, the east shore of northern Sylt is rather inactive due to its sheltered position as well as solid coastal protection constructions, such as dykes and petrified coastal sections.

In order to compensate the coastal retreat at the west shore, sand replenishment is carried out almost annually since 1972. By this, the loss of sand gets compensated and the shoreline could be fixed. At the same time, the annual accumulation rates at the north shore increased considerably. Due to the sand replenishment at the west shore, a lot of unconsolidated material is artificially supplied to the depositional system. These sediments get transported to some extent to the north shore of Sylt where they are deposited.

High-resolution aerial photographs and their analysis with GIS proofed to be very suitable to monitor coastal processes and the efficiency of coastal protection measures, like sand replenishment. This technique is a powerful method to detect erosion “hotspots”. It can be especially recommended for long-term and local surveys at a smaller spatial scale.

Since 1978, The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have been working together on the protection and conservation of the Wadden Sea covering management, monitoring and research. The aim of the Trilateral Monitoring and Assessment Program (TMAP) is to provide a scientific assessment of the status and development of the Wadden Sea ecosystem and and to assess the status of implementation of the trilateral Targets of the Wadden Sea Plan. On basis of expert workshops, integrated data handling and inter-calibration exercises GIS data on Wadden Sea habitats, like salt marshes, blue mussel beds and dunes could be successfully integrated into the de-centrally organized trilateral data handling of the TMAP. Results are published in the Quality Status Report (QSR) Wadden Sea.

The Pearl River Estuary (PRE) has been experiencing serious water quality deterioration due to the tremendous economic and industrial developments in the nearby regions during the recent years. The integration of a hydrodynamic model, a geographic information system (GIS), and a database of collected field data can provide efficient tools for evaluating potential environmental impact and managing wastewater disposal in PRE. Essential capabilities include: (1) Display of field data in forms of spatial layer, time series, and profile, (2) Data interpolation combining spatial and temporal techniques, (3) Model mesh grid configuration, (4) Model input editing, and (5) Model output interpretation and display. The integrated system is conveniently designed to apply for environmental impact assessment (EIA).

This chapter describes the importance of Geographic Information Systems in sustaining water resources in Nigeria. Water is a central resource and an indispensable ingredient for all human activities. Nigeria as a country is naturally endowed with abundant surface and groundwater resources yet the effective and efficient management of these resources has so far remained elusive. There is an increasing awareness that water resources exist in limited quantities and the available supply varies considerably during the course of a year. As a result, it calls for an urgent need to find ways of saving, reusing and recycling as well as developing geographic information methodologies to improve water resources.

Management of the coastal zone for the purposes of conservation and sustainability is a well-described concept in the literature. This chapter describes the importance of modelling various forms of maritime traffic as an intrinsic element of this process. Effective use of GIS in this context implies extensive data acquisition and cleaning, vessel path simulation, traffic density maps, and incident (spills or accidents) distribution when applicable. Risks can be determined by evaluating detrimental occurrences relative to exposure levels. Effective visualization and quantitative analyses can then be fruitfully applied to various coastal zone management spheres, such as oceans use planning, emergency response planning, and marine protected area delineation.

Spatial planning for coastal aquaculture ensures that the locations of farms are suitable to all relevant stakeholders. The Scottish Government has published “Locational Guidelines”, where lochs and voes around Scotland are divided into three Categories according to their sensitivity to further aquaculture development, to aid this process. Predictive modeling is used to estimate the degree of nutrient enhancement and benthic impact arising from existing aquaculture development. These are reviewed every three months and are then published on the Marine Scotland-Science (MSS) website. The models used for the assessment are described.

In response to concerns of ad hoc approaches, site selection algorithms, such as Marxan, are being used to systematically and scientifically recommend sites for marine reserves. Similar challenges have been faced when siting zones (which aim to protect key habitats while permitting various uses) within broader Marine Protected Areas (MPA). This research explores Marxan as a decision support tool for MPA zoning. It aims to answer two questions:

Can the use of Marxan be streamlined, thereby removing some of the guesswork associated with its use?

and

How can zoning configurations be developed to incorporate large amounts of data and stakeholder opinions while being transparent, repeatable, and scientific?

This chapter reports on experimentation with various Marxan settings using the Southern Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, Canada as a study area as well as interviews conducted with zoning practitioners, in the context of developing Marxan as a decision support tool for MPA zoning.

The regulations and the competence related to the sea often define various, decision-making levels and institutions. To a large extent spatial planning indirectly dictated and still dictates the use of the sea in the narrow coastal belt (since these are the so-called functionally connected lands). The discussion about the sea related issues will also have to focus on the consequences brought by the authorized uses and the applicable legislation on the individual (spatially defined) areas. The modelling approach used for the entire Slovenian coastline (Fig. 24.1) and extent of regional spatial development plan is presented. The methodology presents a turn from qualitative assessments to the suitable conceptual and quantitative solutions which could lead to the comprehensive development of whole region.

Developers and users of GIS face many challenges in producing successful IT tools. This chapter focuses on the domain of applied technology, and the issue of how to successfully transfer information to users in the coastal zone, where there are complex marine and terrestrial jurisdictions and responsibilities. The worldwide increase in the volume of spatial and environmental data has led governments and organisations to consider the approach of information management. The chapter reports the findings of research in the UK, which has detailed problems such as: “information overload”; commercial, political and environmental sensitivity of data, lack of information policy or good data handling practices; and the difficulties and failures in establishing distributed, inter-organisational information systems.

The solutions presented include metadata, interoperability, harmonisation (standards), semantic webs, information policy, information mapping and partnerships. The chapter concludes by focusing at the regional level, and describes the experience Severn Estuary Partnership, UK, in establishing a GIS Forum to bring together technicians, users and owners of GIS data within a network, and building on this, to work together to provide a framework, to resolve the current lack of co-ordination and harmonisation of GIS data to aid spatial planning on the Severn Estuary. The chapter also presents research findings about the information flows and data transfers between coastal stakeholders involved in coastal partnerships around the UK. Improved understanding of these issues will aid IT developers and coastal planners and managers in maintaining networks of relationships that enable them to have a good understanding of the coast and to support their decision-making.

The aim of this work is to identify morphological and hydrodynamic patterns (e.g. coastal forms, wave breaking zones, rip currents patterns, submerged bars), based on several aerial images. Understanding the patterns, which occurred in the past, may help to increase the knowledge to predict future ones. To accomplish this, a GIS database, an analysis algorithm and a user-friendly GIS tool are currently under development. The GIS database will enable to store all available image survey sets, as well as to store the results of the performed visual and computed analysis. This former analysis consists in a Matlab 7.0 algorithm, which uses mainly the toolbox image processing. For non GIS specialists, a specific tool to visualize, overlap and search is being developed using Visual Basic 6.0, and MapObjects 2.3.

The present contribution deals with the natural environment of Paros island coastal zone. More than 75% of the coastal zone consists of high and lower cliffs, whilst the relatively flat coastal plains are rare. The island receives a substantial amount of wave energy flux. The largest rocky and of high slopes coastal part is situated at the northeast and northwest part of the island being developed on hard (resistant to weathering processes) metamorphic rocks. Costal plains (slopes <2.5%) have been formed on Quaternary clastic formations. Furthermore, sandy and/or pebbly beach zones have been formed by the deposition of terrigenous (mainly) and marine sediments, along relatively sheltered from the wave activity parts of the coastline, i.e. the bays of Drios, Kephalos, Plastiras, Piso Livadi and Alikes. Palaeogeographic reconstruction with respect to sea-level rise within Holocene reveals that Paros island, at 10,000 yr BP, was much larger (some 1,025 km

2

) combined with the islands of Antiparos, Naxos and several islets, while at 6,000 yr BP was only connected to Antiparos island covering 264.3 km

2

. Finally, the predicted ca. 0.5 m of sea level rise for the year 2100, due to climatic change, will definitely threaten the socio-economy of the island as all touristic beaches will be deteriorated as well as several constructions along its coastline.

The Cycladic islands are located in the central Aegean Sea (Greece) forming a partly submerged plateau separated into two parts: the eastern shallower one (Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros, Syros, Ios, Sikinos, Folegandros) which formed one big island (6.978 km

2

) at the end of the last glacial period; the western islands (Kea, Kythnos, Serifos, Sifnos, Milos) which remained separated during the same period. The eastern islands constitute an erosional plateau which is the end product of a Neogene palaeosurface that was partially submerged due to thinning of the crust during the Quaternary. The presence of numerous Neolithic sites both on land and submerged indicates the existence of an advanced civilization in the area for thousands of years. The location of the lost Atlantis could be found in this area probably between Naxos, Paros and Antiparos.

This chapter describes the study of the structural control of the Meganissi island coastal zone and its geomorphological evolution; based on these, it presents a coastal hazard risk map. The coastal geomorphology is affected by the lithological configuration, the tectonism, the wider seismotectonic status and the sea activity. For this study, a database has been created in GIS. using all data deriving from the above characteristics as well as from detailed fieldwork, aerial photos, satellite images and pre-existing maps. Data were analysed and processed in order to understand the geomorphological evolution of this island and its close connection with the structural evolution.

Finally, we proceeded to develop a coastal hazard risk map using the slope gradient, the wave energy and the structural characteristics of this island as input variables. This has been achieved via a fuzzy inferences model using a loosen coupling between the Mat lab software package and the MapInfo GIS.

The present chapter describes an efficient methodology to predict the impact of a marina on the adjacent indented beaches planform: initially, the impact of the marina on the hydrodynamic agents that induce sand transport in the adjacent indented beaches; finally, the beaches planform response to the modification of the hydrodynamic conditions. The innovative aspect of this analytical methodology concerns the process of estimating the dominant wave energy flux in front of the beaches, which is based on a statistical analysis of the incident wave regime. The methodology was successfully validated through the comparison of the shoreline configurations obtained analytically with the ones extracted from aerial photographs, before and after the construction of the marina.

This chapter studies the counteractive dynamic marine and river environments responsible for a river mouth’s and a delta’s modulation. The Acheloos River (West Greece) was chosen as the case study due to the recent changes taken place in its Delta area; the geotechnical constructions and the agricultural planning have altered the basin’s conditions. The aim of this study is to analyze the present dominant environment and the impact of human activity on this balance with the application of modern technological tools; emphasis is placed on the geomorphological along with the land use changes taking place in the three district parts of the Acheloos’ delta within a period of four decades (1960–2000): delta plain, delta front, pro delta. Bibliographic references, geographical and geological maps, aerial and satellite imagery of different seasons and dates, were utilized in addition to extensive fieldwork measurements and mapping. A geographic database was developed and it is continuously updated.

A strategic-level evaluation tool for comparing coastal management policies against different future scenarios of climate change is described. The effect of sea-level rise on tidal and flood limits is mapped using a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) and an adapted hydrological routine. Implications for the coastal landscape are then determined using empirical thresholds encapsulated in transition rules for land use and land cover change. The resulting spatial data are analysed using a multi-criteria assessment procedure to facilitate an evaluation of policy options against the provision of multiple coastal services. Analysis suggests that small-scale managed realignments of the coast, although providing a political compromise, do not score highly on performance criteria compared to either large-scale realignment or maintaining the existing position. This approach also allows consideration of a broader range of environmental benefits and ecosystem services than a conventional analysis based upon property and land values.

The chapter describes the work for a coastal defence monitoring program that has been promoted by Regional Authority in Northern Italy (Emilia Romagna). With the aim to organize knowledge on coastal defenses (i.e., presence, state and management) and make analyses comparable with coastal evolution of both emerged and submerged beach, a geodatabase has been implemented; this last has further been improved with the collaboration of technicians that are involved on coastal defense management. The final aim of the work was to supply administration with a powerful and innovative tool for assessing the efficacy of coastal defenses in time. The work also proposes a way to solicit attention on data effectiveness (by way of metadata) and on positional accuracy for coastline evolution assessment.

This chapter describes the environmental indicators GIS of the Catalan coast, Spain. The spatial data model is based on vector and raster layers with three main modules: the biodiversity, the general biophysical and the socioeconomic. Presently, the database has a number of pressure and impact indicators that have been used to model the components and structure of the system and are suggested to build ecological resilience. Special interest has been given to the analysis of functional groups of species that are relevant to the dynamics of the coastal system, and preliminary results are presented. This system constitutes a user-oriented analytical and monitoring tool for coastal zone managers and researchers. Although, the system is under development it is expected that resulting spatial indicators of environmental condition can be used to promote more sustainable coastal strategies and actions in the Catalan coast.

The increasing amount of people that every year visits the coastal areas makes necessary to carry out a detailed analysis of all the processes that occur in these areas, in order to avoid the damages that the natural processes can cause.

To this respect, the creation of a database, containing geographical, numerical, and alphanumerical information in various digital formats, including vector and raster maps, terrestrial, aerial and satellite imagery, is essential. This information set constitutes the basis to develop a risk assessment working method in a pilot area, and apply it later on along the Mediterranean Coast, considering it as the starting point to get a comprehensive risk mapping in the Mediterranean littoral.

Susceptibility of Asian megadeltas to climate change, including sea-level rise, is investigated using GIS. The Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, Mekong, Red, Pearl, Changjiang, and Huanghe deltas began to form around 6000 years ago and have prograded since. The surface topography of active and abandoned delta plains is examined using digital terrain models derived from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data and channel morphology is investigated using radar imagery. After delta plains are abandoned they become increasingly dominated by tidal processes. Population density is estimated using gridded world population data but highly variable local microtopography and uncertainty regarding future climate changes preclude detailed vulnerability analysis.