Lecture 19 Overview of Coastal GIS Applications
Learning Objectives
19.1 How can we describe the character of GIS applications and GIS projects, and situate them in the ring of context diagram?
19.2 Why are coastal GIS applications important for learning about spatial-temporal analysis?
19.3 What are some projects and applications associated with Coastal GIS?
19.1 How can we describe the character of GIS applications and GIS projects, and situate them in the ring of context diagram?
How does a project differ from an application? A GIS project is an activity for carrying out the use of GIS for a particular task. AGIS application is a collection of software capabilities that can be used over and over in various GIS projects to effect a similar result, although the project characteristics might differ somewhat from project to project. It is easier to justify investment in a project when you adopt an application that can be used over and over in various projects.
Investment in project/application efforts can be compared using a framework containing the components of GIS…
Motivation – Why do it? For example, state a goal to be achieved.
People – Who are the stakeholders and staff involved?
Data – What are the data categories? What is the domain (scale)? What are the relationships of interest for your particular problem/opportunity?
Software – How shall we use procedures and operations to address a problem?
Hardware – Who owns and where are the physical computer resources located?
Timing – When will data processing be performed and information be needed?
How might we use the “ring of contexts” to characterize applications and projects?
What rings would be used?
19.2 Why are coastal GIS applications important for learning about spatial-temporal analysis of sustainable systems?
The phrases human-environment, environment-society, human-natural, social-ecological, and social-biophysical emerge as perspectives about interaction between important phenomena from different knowledge domains. However, all have a common thread in spatial-temporal relationships resulting in change. That is, what/who is related to what/who in space and time, and what is (should be) the result of the interaction? An overview of a spatial-temporal dynamic systems approach can be found here. Projects and applications of GIS are driven by important concerns & questions to be addressed.
Consider the character of human-environment interaction in light of the stormwater runoff across nearshore coastal areas as a topic mentioned several times in the course. Natural areas and human built-up areas within close proximity foster interaction between the areas. This is particularly true in shore zones where people like to live and take part in recreation. How much activity is too much activity along the shore? Rather than “human-environment” as the focus, what if we considered “environment-society” as the focus, what would be the differences in a GIS application? How does scale and resolution (granularity) of the phenomena under study enter the analysis?
What about social (human) and biophysical (natural) processes as the underlying character of interactions?What would be the differences in the applications? Physical processes such as precipitation interact with social processes such as human settlement in a variety of land use activities that influenceeach other, e.g. stormwater runoff in need of management. How much development is too much along the coast?
Coastal GIS applications commonly address questions, as those above, through a sustainable systems perspective. A system is a collection of elements (phenomena), e.g., those involving human and environmentalphenomena, and the inter-relationships among those elements, e.g. as in human-environment interactions within social-ecological systems, coupled human-natural systems etc. As more and more people want to live in urban coastal regions, it is important to sustain (and improve if possible) health and well-being in such regions. Sustainable systems are collections of elements and relationships wherein the elements and relationships are characterized in terms of the triple bottom-line of social, economic, and ecological conditions of health and well-being. Goals for well-being are to be balanced among those conditions. How does society set and implement goals for development to sustain health and well-being?
The conceptual diagram to followdepicts relationships among elements within a coastal green stormwater infrastructure context. Every pair of elements (boxes) sets up an opportunity to use GIS to investigate the relationship among the phenomena involved. An application for examining “ecosystem services” (or more broadly, sustainable system services) would be the collection of software capabilities (e.g. overlay and buffer) that can be used as applications (i.e., used many times) to examine relationships for any place in the world. The applications are likely to make use of ‘iterative’ operations because of the spatial-temporal change being investigated at various scales.
19.3 What are some projects and applications associated with Coastal GIS?
How does a sustainable systems perspective help us understand what is at stake?
Coastal GIS Applications and Projectsaround the Puget Sound region
Puget Sound RecoveryProject Activity Atlas about ecosystem recovery
Puget Sound watershed characterization project by the WA Dept of Ecology
Coastal GIS Applications and Projects around the US
Digital Coast Partnership led by NOAA Coastal Services Center. A portal for a multitude of resources data, tools, methods, etc. including applications for coastal inundation, climate change and sea-level rise, offshore renewable energy and more.
Another US federal agency with a mandate for coastal issues is the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program. Mapping service application for the Pacific West Coast.
WA Dept of Ecology, Washington Coastal Atlas
Central coast of California has a particular concern about Wetlands and Watersheds
NOAA Partnership Restore the Gulf. Environmental Response Mapping application in connection with Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill Clean-up
GIS use to improve understanding of threats to Natural and Artificial Reefs in Florida
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection monitors submerged aquatic vegetation.
Environmental Protection Agency’s climate impacts(Jan 19 archive) along coasts.
GIS at Esri for coastal zone management in the Chesapeake Bay
Ohio Dept of Natural Resources, Lake Erie Coastal Atlas Project
Wisconsin Lake SuperiorCoastal Atlas and Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute
Coastal GIS Applications and Projects in Countries around the World
The International Coastal Atlas Network helps to organize GIS activity about coastal resource management around the world.
Marine geomatics research lab at Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada providesinformation about various aspects of marine GIS.
Natural Hazards in Australia–a portal that provides GIS and other information about hazard types, risk modeling, emergency management, including project/application information about Tsunamis
A Coastal GIS special issue of the International Journal of Geographic Information containing 10 articles about various topics contributed by authors from around the world.