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INTRODUCTION 
In the last five years there has been increasing interest in information about 
the coastal zone. The accident with the Exxon Valdez; the Green Plan, 
published by the federal department of the Environment; the report of the 
Committee on Land Use and the Rural Environment, released by the New 
Brunswick Government in April, 1993, the development of aquaculture; and 
the growing conflicts in the use of the marine environment; all point to the 
increasing urgency felt by many levels of government to better equip 
themselves to manage the coastal zone. 
Departments at both the federal and provincial level undertake data 
collection of land based data and water based data. This data is collected to 
support the mandates in those departments to manage resources. Private 
sector interests (oil industry, environmental consultants) also collect data, in 
order to make good business decisions, or to meet government requirements. 
Coastal data is a combination of water based data and land based data. There 
is momentum growing at all levels to better coordinate this collection of 
information, and to better exploit the potential of that already collected. The 
management of this data is changing in response to financial, environmental, 
and regulatory needs that did not exist 10 years ago. This paper will review 
the main differences between water based and land based data, will discuss the 
importance of standards to the proper exploitation of the value of the data 
already collected, and will review several projects underway to improve 
efficiencies in the collection of data and its management, focusing on recent 
efforts in Atlantic Canada to cooperate better at the federal, provincial and 
private sector levels in order to streamline the management of coastal data. 
The Canadian Hydrographic Service Atlantic is the collector of bathymetric 
information for the Atlantic Region. It is responsible for producing a range of 
products in order to insure safe navigation in Atlantic waters. The New 
Brunswick Geographic Information Corporation is a Crown Corporation 
charged with, among other things, providing basic geographic information 
for the province. The Land Information Management Service is a section of 
the Department of Municipal Affairs in Nova Scotia. It is charged with a 
range of objectives including the development and promotion of efficient 
collection, use and management of geo-referenced information. 
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LAND BASED AND WATER BASED DATA 
There are some fundamental differences between land and water based data. 
It is important to understand these differences in order to appreciate the 
challenges in trying to merge them in order to create a dataset suitable for 
managing coastal information. 
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