ISPRS, Vol.34, Part 2W2, “Dynamic and Multi-Dimensional GIS”, Bangkok, May 23-25, 2001 
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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).