Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure

From Ocean Teacher Library

Introduction

Definitions for the term "Spatial Data Infrastructure" (SDI) differ quite considerably. For our purposes, we borrow the general definition used for the Australian SDI, which includes "the people, policies and technologies necessary to enable the generation and use of spatially referenced data through all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and within academia." A slightly more detailed definition, taken from the multi-national European SDI - INSPIRE - includes "metadata, spatial data sets and spatial data services; network services
and technologies; agreements on sharing, access and use; and coordination and monitoring mechanisms, processes and procedures, established, operated or made available in accordance with legislation." Note, however, that very few nations enacted any separate legislation specifically for creating national SDI and none for marine or coastal SDI components.

The stated objectives of SDI initiatives vary as much as do the definitions, legal mandates, types of organisation responsible for specifying and implementing SDI and actual progress achieved in creating national and regional SDIs. One complication in specifying any SDI is the nature of spatial information, i.e. information with an important location attribute, often said to represent 80% of all information held, especially at government level. The visionaries and designers of SDI must accommodate the widely varying information needs of highly diverse disciplines and sectors of society, business and government. Health epidemiologists are seldom interested in the same spatial data as geological surveyors, air traffic controllers or coastal zone managers. Yet an important overlap in jurisdiction and information needs may arise, e.g. when a potential health epidemic is generated by toxic chemical concentrations in marine fauna later consumed by area residents. Then knowledge of the coastal zone flora and fauna, hydrography, tidal states, nearby land use practices of industry and agriculture and transport routes, fishing practices and zones all become intertwined. The complex relationships between different types of spatial information are one reason that countries take different routes to specify their SDI, ranging from visions to strategies to goals to detailed content (data and standards) and implementation plans (rules and regulations). We all recognize that the coastal zone is a difficult geographical area to manage due to temporal issues (tides and seasons) and the overlapping of physical geography and hydrography (offshore, near shore, shoreline, inshore), of jurisdictions, legal mandates and remits of government agencies and the often competing needs of stakeholders. Typically, many different local, national and regional government agencies are responsible for different aspects of the same physical areas and uses of the coastal zone, e.g. fisheries, environment, agriculture, transport (inland and marine), urban planning and cadastre, national mapping agency and the hydrographic service.

Conflict resolution in this complex piece of real-estate called the “coast” is sometimes used as justification for special attention for the coast within NSDI initiatives. As Bartlett (2000) expresses it: “Given the diversity of interest groups, stakeholders, managerial authorities and administrative structures that converge at the shore, conflicts are almost inevitable between and among coastal users, managers, developers and the wider public, as well as between human society and the natural environment.” Because of such complex physical and institutional relationships, it is not possible to develop a coastal SDI (CSDI) in isolation from the broader National SDI (NSDI) for a nation or Regional SDI (RSDI). CSDI will necessarily be a subset of a more comprehensive NSDI because the coastal zone covers multiple physical and institutional spaces included in the generic NSDI. For that reason, it is important that people and agencies with specific knowledge and experience of the coastal zone and marine offshore areas and information requirements be an integral part of the NSDI and RSDI planning process.

M/CSDI within National, Regional and Global SDI

Few nations have specified separate SDI components for individual sectors such as the coastal zone. In the USA, a Coastal SDI vision was developed in 2000-2001, based on four goals that relate to the USA NSDI. Practical implementation work relating to metadata standards and creation, and geoportals, is undertaken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). The most recent strategy for the US Coastal SDI is the 'Digital Coast' initiative. Learn more about this at www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/index.html.

Canada has proposed a Marine Geospatial Data Infrastructure initiative (MGDI) within the national Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) (Chopin and Costain, 2001). MGDI is seen as an extension to the CGDI in response to “the need for a comprehensive, integrated and common infrastructure of marine data and information … accessible to all stakeholders.”

Australia has developed

Principle Components of M/CSDI

Having reviewed the few formal coastal SDI initiatives that exist, all at national level, it appears that a CSDI mainly comprises: data sources, standards, enabling technologies and institutional policies. Work in relation to the first two components needs to be carried out with a specific marine or coastal focus, which is sometimes missing from generic SDI initiatives. The latter two aspects apply to the wider requirements of any information infrastructure, not just that of coastal SDI or even for spatial data alone.

Basic Reference Data for the SDI

The presence or absence of basic reference spatial data (also sometimes called ‘framework’ data) in National, Regional and Global SDI implementations that relate to the needs of a viable coastal SDI are shown in Table 1.1. As one might suspect, the most common are bathymetry, shoreline and boundary data. For most Regional and Global SDI initiatives, there is not sufficient detail in specification of data elements to determine whether or not the needs of coastal and marine resource managers and researchers will be met (with the exception of INSPIRE/WFD). Since the basic data will be collected at national level, this might not appear to be a serious problem at the moment. Yet when data exchange is required for research purposes, resolving boundary disputes or to satisfy a nation’s responsibilities regarding various international data exchange conventions, then the absence of regional and global agreement on SDI contents and access issues will become noticed.

Table 1.1 Coastal SDI components in national, regional and global SDIs
SDI Component	USA	Canada	INSPIRE-WFD	APSDI	GlobalMap
bathymetry	yes	yes	yes	maybe	maybe
shoreline	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
marine cadastre	yes	yes	no	yes	maybe
coastal imagery	maybe	maybe	yes	no	no
marine navigation	maybe	yes	maybe	no	maybe
tidal benchmarks	maybe	maybe	yes	no	no
benthic habitats	maybe	maybe	yes-WFD	no	no

A ‘yes’ in the Table indicates that the component in the left-hand column is formally listed as an important data component in the definition of spatial data infrastructure at national, regional or global level. The number of ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ entries is disquieting. Fortunately, the ‘no’ responses appear mainly in regional or global initiatives while ‘maybes’ indicate that detailed user requirements or specifications have been identified and published, along with existing data sources that might provide this data. However, no firm decisions have been made as to how or if this data will be included within the higher-level NSDI or not.

M/CSDI Is More Than Data

Other components of an SDI mentioned in most SDI descriptions cover: metadata creation and standards, technical guidance (including standards) on spatial precision, accuracy and data formats (both raster and vector), data access policies (some of which are more liberal than others) and intellectual property guidance.

Standards issues in the spatial data world are now much better addressed than a mere five years ago due to the extensive work of the International Standards Organization’s Technical Committee 211 (TC/211) on Geographic Information/Geomatics which is creating “a structured set of standards for information concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly associated with a location relative to the Earth” comprising some 40 new GI-related standards (ISO, 2002). In parallel with ISO, the global reach and uptake of the GIS interoperability work of the Open GIS Consortium, Inc., and OGC Europe, Ltd., is providing a clear way forward in regard to integrating GI applications and data sources, especially using the Web as the service delivery machinery (OGC, 2002).

Other important standards developments relating to coastal and marine data include the S-57 (Special Publication No. 57) cartographic standard for developed and maintained by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) International Hydrographic Bureau (IHB) in Monaco (IHO, 1996). This standard is used for collection and exchange of hydrographic data among national Hydrographic offices globally. It is also very important for marine navigation as applied to the new Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS) now being introduced throughout the maritime industry. S-57 comprises a hydrographic data model, an object catalogue and an electronic nautical chart (ENC) product specification that are standard for ECDIS data.

Various shoreline and boundary data metadata standards have been developed at national level, as mentioned previously for the USA within the FGDC shoreline metadata working group. Looking to the future, two projects are underway that aim to specify a globally agreed standard for marineXML, a marine-specific implementation of the eXtended Markup Language (XML) now used widely on the Internet for conveying semantic content of information as opposed to only the display specifications provided by HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). MarineXML is described as “an interoperability framework for global ocean observation systems” (ICES, 2003) which will encompass coastal zone elements as well. The development work on marineXML is undertaken by the European Union, via a part-funded project in the EU’s Framework RTD programme (IOC, 2003a) in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) based at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. (IOC, 2003b) National initiatives on creating marineXML specifications are also underway, for example in Australia and the USA (Sligoeris, 2002; Davis et al, 2002)

More serious barriers remain in regard to harmonised data access policies and exploitation rights for spatial information, particularly that collected by public sector agencies. The European Union is trying to address this problem at a regional level via a new Directive setting out an agreed EU-wide framework for access to and exploitation of public sector information (European Commission, 2002). Similar initiatives are under discussion, in consultation or being implemented in both developed and developing nations across the globe. The impact that these initiatives will have on the coastal zone (and larger research) community cannot be underestimated. Even in countries with strong “freedom of information” cultures, such as the USA, some public sector marine information is not disclosed due to fear of liability actions against the data providers (Lockwood and Fowler, 2001). With intellectual property (IP) legislation in a state of flux across the globe while attempts are made to accommodate the prior IP regime and existing international IP conventions to the digital world, resolving many of the non-technical data-related problems is far easier than the institutional ones.

Additional Resources

[put well-formed wiki links here; make sure you take full advance of wikipedia itself along with other references]

Subsections of this Article

	Pagename	Short title	Description
Global Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiatives	Global Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiatives	Global SDI Initiatives	none
National Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Examples	National Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Examples	National SDI Examples	none
Regional (Multinational) Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Examples	Regional (Multinational) Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure Examples	Regional SDI Examples	none

Information about this article

Short title: Marine and Coastal SDI

Description: none

Expertise level: beginner

Author: Roger.Longhorn

Approval status: save as draft

Approved by: Murray.Brown

Last change: 2008-9-30

Subsection of: Geospatial Data Concepts

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