Information, integration, internet and interface: A solution for coastal zone management

There is a growing requirement for coastal zone managers to have rapid access to data and information as the basis for decision-making, planning and problem solving in the coastal zone. Increasingly a combination of both physical and human data and information at different scales and for different dates is needed. One source is remotely sensed data, of which there is now a vast store of multi-sensor, multi-spatial and multi-temporal imagery. However, few coastal zone managers currently know what data and imagery are available, what they can be used for, and how to use them, both on their own or when integrated with other geo-spatial data and information. Furthermore, there is a lack of guidance as to which sensor will provide the best information. The applications specialist also needs to know how, once they have retrieved the data, they can extract the information they need quickly and easily. The Internet has begun to provide a potential solution to this problem as a very powerful medium to store, access, process, analyse, visualise and disseminate environmental data and information for coastal zone management. With further developments the Internet can be used to provide a very important framework for the coastal zone manager to acquire data and information, complete with Metadata, to process it using applications tools with simple interfaces, to integrate it with other sources of data and information, and to use this as the basis for planning and decision-making.