ISPRS, Vol.34, Part 2W2, “Dynamic and Multi-Dimensional GIS”, Bangkok, May 23-25, 2001
343
COASTAL GIS: FUNCTIONALITY VERSUS APPLICATIONS
Thomas Q ZENG 14 , Qiming ZHOU 2 , Peter COWELL 3 and Haijun HUANG 4
1 New South Wales Fisheries, PO Box 21 CRONULLA NSW 2230, Australia
Phone: 61 2 9527 8411 Fax: 61 2 9527 8529, e-mail: zengt@fisheries.nsw.gov.au
department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, e-mail: qiming@hkbu.edu.hk
3 Coastal Studies Unit, Division of Geography, School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science,
University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, Australia, e-mail: P.Cowell@csu.usyd.edu.au
4 lnstitute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Qingdao 266071, P.R. China,e-mail: hjhuang@ms.qdio.ac.cn
KEYWORD: GIS, Coastal Zone Management, Fisheries, Model Integration
ABSTRACT
Despite the high appraisals of the potential of GIS application in coastal / marine environment, the development of Coastal GIS is still
relatively slow (Bartlett, 2000; Hooge, et at, 2000). This is due to i) the complexity of coastal / marine systems in 3D environment; ii) lack of
data; iii) lack of communication between coastal experts and GIS professional (Green, 1995); and iv) as result of all the above factors, the
commercial GIS vendors do not take the risk in their investment in development of coastal GIS. Based on reviewing of literatures, this paper
addresses the functionality (both existing and potential) versus different coastal applications with an example of fisheries. Taking the stock of
existing development, this paper proposes a concept of level of application, identifies three levels of application and their corresponding
requirement of GIS functions. It will provide potential GIS users with some examples for their applications and suggests some functions that
could potentially applied in coastal zone, which may promote the development of Coastal GIS.
1. Introduction
The sustainable development in coastal zone is vital to our
society (Cicin-Sain, 1993), given that many cities around the
world are concentrated in the coastal fringe. The economic and
comfort advantages of life in the coastal environment (e.g. the
sea breeze and view) result in high population density (Zeng et.
al., 1998). The coast zone constitutes 50 - 70 % of the world
population. And it is estimated that 78 % of gross national
product (GNP) worldwide is derived from activities that are
directly or indirectly connected with coastal zones (IPCC, 1995).
Human well being is directly or indirectly depends on the
availability of environmental goods and services provided by
marine and coastal systems.
GIS has proven to be indispensable for Coastal Zone
Management (CZM) (Damoiseaux, 1995). The role of GIS in
CZM has been highly appraisals, e.g. Ellis (1972), Ader (1982),
Fairfield (1987), Davis and Davis (1988), Townend (1990), Welch
et at, (1992), Riddel (1992), Ricketts (1992), Jones (1995),
Bartlett (1990, 1994), Deakin and Miment (1994), as CZM
requires handling a large amount of spatial and aspatial data.
The reasons of using GIS for coastal zone have been well
articulated by Barllet (Bartlett, etat, 2000).
In recent years, the pressures for aplying GIS to CZM are
intensified. However, overviewing the boarder spectrum of GIS
applications in coastal zone, few have discussed coastal GIS in
generic terms, There is growing realisation that if use of GIS is to
go beyond simple data display, reporting and management, there
needs to have a better understanding of more advanced forms of
analysis and modeling (Raper and Maguire, 1992; Watford,
1999). Based on the brief review of literatures, this paper, first,
categories the current GIS applications in CZM, and followed by
an example of fisheries industry. Then, it discusses some GIS
functions in a generic sense, outlines GIS functionalities versus
applications at different level and discusses further the
development.
2. Brief review of current applications
The development of Coastal GIS has begun as early as 1970’s
(Ellis 1972), and is booming in the last decade. There are multi
interest groups in coastal zone (Fig.1), and each group has its
particular interest area and aspects of coastal environment, be it
the shipping and harbors facilities, fisheries, sand and mineral
mining, military maneuvers, recreation and conservation. Current
GIS Applications in coastal zone are diversified case-based
studies, mainly focused on vector-based. These applications can
be categorised as follows:
Category of the coastal applications
A. Coastal mapping
This type of application is mainly focused on thematic mapping in
the coastal zone, such as Chorophyll concentration mapping
using TM data (Chen, et at, 1996), Coastal wetland mapping
using historical data (Van Der Veen, et at, 1997), sea grass /
mangrove mapping (Williams et at, 1997, Watford, 1998), and
marine seabed mapping (Lauro et at, 1999) and Mapping
harmful envents related to Phytoplakton blooms in Western
Europe and North America (WGHABD, 2001).
