In recent years significant momentum has occurred in the development of Internet resources for decision makers, scientists and the general public who are interested in the coast. Coastal mapping plays an important role in informing decision makers on issues such as national sovereignty, resource management, maritime safety and hazard assessment. A key trend has been the development of coastal web atlases (CWAs), defined as a collection of digital maps and datasets with supplementary tables, illustrations, and information that systematically illustrate the coast, oftentimes with cartographic and decision support tools. They are playing an increasingly crucial role in informing regional decision- and policy-making across the themes of coastal governance, hazard mitigation, climate change impacts and vulnerability mapping, marine spatial planning, and more. While multiple benefits are derived from tailor-made atlases, the potential exists to derive added value from the integration of disparate CWAs, to optimize decision making at a variety of levels and across themes. And while digital data sets have continued to grow exponentially, our ability to derive meaning, knowledge and management decisions from all of these data in an analytical context remains poor. In response to the need for coordinated CWA, the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) was recently established. This Newtwork consists of 35 organizations from 10 countries, and has garnered the interest of local and state governments, non-governmental organizations, universities, NOAA, the European Environment Agency (EEA), and UNESCO.
Dr. Dawn Wright from Oregon State University will convene two international workshops that bring together key experts from Europe, the United States, eastern and southern Africa, and the Caribbean that will (1) finalize the governance and strategic planning structure for ICAN; (2) further ICAN's mission of establishing scientific grounding and knowledge base among the important knowledge domains of CWA development (geography, computer science, and coastal resource management), (3) develop advances in semantic interoperability for CWAs, (4) exchange lessons learned in spatial data infrastructure between the US and Europe's INSPIRE initiative, and (5) prepare collaborative submissions to the next available NSF INTEROP and PIRE competitions.
These workshops will provide a model for how other scholars and management agencies might develop informatics solutions to address the critical state of our coastal zones and fisheries. The project will develop recommendations that could potentially save thousands to millions of U.S. dollars and Euros in the prevention or mitigation of failed coastal development projects.
