Interoperability as supporting tool for Future Forecasting on coastal and marine areas

Abstract

The powerful development of technology has allowed coastal sciences to advance significantly towards developing forecasting tools coupling empirical measurements with computer modelling, which proves to be of paramount importance for most decision making processes. However, coastal models and forecasting tools are data hungry and, whilst data and information availability for regional scales is more abundant than ever, the need for harmonised and compatible data-formats to integrate spatialised data continues to be an issue to feed these models. On the data and information side of development, interoperable systems appear to be somewhat limited to mapping agencies and computer scientists who focus on issues that are, to some extent, of limited relevance to coastal and marine scientists. In recent years however, this gap is being bridged by Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) in the framework of the INSPIRE Directive, which are showing to provide, via its integration with worldwide initiatives such as GEOSS and others, a source of great advances. In this paper we present two SDI designed, developed and implemented to be applied in coastal and marine management. Both platforms have taken a focused approach at spatial data manipulation favouring the use of specific viewers with circumscribed tools for making onscreen analyses and interpretations and capable of generating atlas-like products in real time dedicated to specific policies of relevance to the coastal and marine institutional framework.