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ON-SITE COASTAL DECISION MAKING WITH WIRELESS MOBILE GIS 
iy et dx ; T de : J 
Xutong Niu", Ruijin Ma®, Tarig Ali", Alok Srivastava’, and Ron Li" 
"Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, The Ohio State University 
470 Hitchcock Hall, 2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1275 
Email(s): {niu.9@, ma.106, srivastava.l, 1i.282} @osu.cdu 
Department of Technology and Geomatics, East Tennessee State University 
P.O. Box 70552, Johnson City, TN 37614-1707 
Email: ali@@etsu.edu 
Commission II, WG 11/1 
KEYWORDS: Mobile, GIS, Internet/ Web, Spatial Infrastructures, Decision Support 
ABSTRACT: 
Coastal mapping and shoreline change detection are critical to many applications, including navigation, coastal zone management, 
coastal environmental protection, and sustainable development. Field surveying and on-site investigation become inevitable to 
ensure the quality of coastal decision making. To provide innovative tools for governmental agencies to increase efficiency and 
reduce operation costs, a wireless mobile GIS is developed and applied to on-site decision making for coastal management. 
This wireless mobile GIS system has three components: a coastal-structure permit subsystem; a shoreline erosion awareness 
subsystem; and a wireless on-site spatial subsystem. The coastal-structure permit subsystem has been implemented to simulate, in a 
GIS environment, the decision-making process for granting construction permits for coastal protection structures. The web-based 
shoreline erosion awareness subsystem has been developed to aid local residents in making land-use decisions. It is implemented 
both to describe the extent of historic shorelines and previous erosion and to predict future shoreline change due to erosion. The 
wireless on-site spatial subsystem helps government officials remotely access and update spatial data from field, thus allowing for 
decision making in real time. This system has been developed in the United States based on the environment at Lake Erie, Ohio. 
INTRODUCTION 
Government agencies charged with the mission of managing 
coastal land and water resources face a great challenge (Carter 
and Guy, 1980). Lake Erie is a dynamic body of water noted for 
the ferocity of its storm waves and the havoc they wreak along 
the lakeshore (Mackey and Guy, 1994). In Ohio, ninety-five 
percent of the Lake Erie shoreline is eroding (ODNR, 1999). 
Over much of the region, erosion rates have been less than one 
meter per year. However, local rates may exceed two meters 
per year (Highman, 1997). Erosion-caused economic losses 
exceed tens of millions of dollars per year. As an early effort to 
protect and manage Ohio's Lake Erie shore, in 1955 the State 
of Ohio began requiring permits for the construction of 
structures designed to control the effects of waves, floods and 
erosion on the shoreline. Permits were initially issued by the 
Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of 
Shore Erosion, then, after 1961, through its Chief Engineer. 
Today's Shore Structure Permits are issued through ODNR's 
Division of Water (USDOC, 1999). Specifically, according to 
Ohio's coastal management law, SOhio Revised Code (O.R.C.) 
1521.22, a Shore Structure Permit must be obtained prior to the 
construction of any “shore structure” along the Ohio shoreline 
of Lake Erie. Shore structures commonly include nourished 
beaches, seawalls, stone revetments, bulkheads, breakwaters, 
groins, docks, piers, and jetties. To apply for a Shore Structure 
Permit, landowners submit an application to the ODNR Coastal 
Services Center that includes detailed plans and specifications 
prepared by a professional engineer. Figure | shows an 
example of a blueprint of a structure that might be included as 
part of an application. Plans and specifications for erosion 
control structures along the shore are reviewed in accordance 
with coastal engineering standards. A permit to construct the 
structure will be issued by the Chief Engineer if the proposed 
structure complies with applicable laws and rules (ODNR, 
1999). A site visit is usually conducted some time during the 60 
days of the review process. After the permit is issued, another 
site inspection may be conducted to ensure the structure is 
constructed in accordance with the permit. 
Currently, most of the permit approval process is carried out by 
manual inspections based on the experiences of individual 
inspectors. Through our National Science Foundation (NSF) 
Digital Government Project, a research and development effort 
has been made to use spatial information technology to support 
the decision making process in a more effective, equitable and 
efficient manner. The system has been designed to a) use 
periodical shorelines and coastal change data in an Internet- 
based GIS and distributed environment for analyzing the 
appropriateness of the proposed structure, including regulatory 
compliance; b) employ mobile mapping and wireless 
technologies to support on-site field inspection activities that 
require GPS field surveys through access to spatial information 
about the site and communication with the office staff; and, c) 
develop an easy-to-access, user-friendly Internet-based system 
for making coastal residents aware of coastal change conditions 
and providing information about coastal erosion. 
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW 
With the rapid development of mobile communications and 
wireless technologies, more and more mobile GIS applications 
have emerged from the fields of location-based services,