Infrastructure for data sharing, spatial analysis, resource decision-making, and societal impact: The Oregon Coastal Atlas

2003 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
New Orleans

SPECIAL SESSION: GIS in Coastal and Marine Areas I

All abstracts in GIS in Coastal and Marine Areas I
All abstracts in GIS in Coastal and Marine Areas II

D Wright

Dept of Geosciences, Oregon State Univ

Corvallis, OR 97331-5506

541-737-1229

T Haddad, P Klarin, R Dana

Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program

Portland and Salem offices, OR

M Dailey

Ecotrust

Portland, OR

J Marra

NOAA Pacific Services Center

Honolulu, HI

D Revell

Surfrider Foundation

Salem, OR

M Tavakoli-Shiraji, K Crouse

Dept of Geosciences, Oregon State Univ

Corvallis, OR

The Oregon Coastal Atlas, a collaboration of the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program, Oregon State University and Ecotrust, is an interactive map, data, and metadata portal for coastal resources managers and scientists, with additional outreach sections for the general public. The portal enables users obtain data, but also to understand its original context, and to use it for solving a spatial problem via online tools. The design of the atlas draws from the reality that resource decision-making applications require much more than simple access to data. Resource managers commonly make decisions that involve modeling risk, assessing cumulative impacts and weighing proposed alterations to ecosystem functions and values. These decisions involve pulling together knowledge from disparate disciplines such as biology, geology, oceanography, hydrology, chemistry and engineering. Practitioners within each one of these disciplines are often vested in the technologies that dominate the market within their particular field. This presents significant data integration difficulties for investigators involved in management decisions that are as inherently interdisciplinary as those in the coastal zone. The goal of our proposed effort is to address these problems by incorporating a variety of geospatial data and analysis tools within a common framework. End-user training and direct technical assistance are incorporated into the development of the system, as are back-end system maintenance tools to ensure system longevity. In this way we seek to improve universal participation in coastal decision-making among communities by extending infrastructure to public offices that would otherwise face difficulties accessing these services and resources. Keywords: web GIS, data access, information management, decision-making, coastal

Return to Dawn's Vita