Seamless SDI model to facilitate spatially enabled land-sea interface
The land-sea interface is one of the most complex areas of management in the world. The population along the coastline is continuously increasing and has done so dramatically in the past decade. This has brought with it an increased need to more effectively and efficiently manage this area to meet the economic, environmental and social outcomes of sustainable development.
In response to this situation, on land, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) have been developed to create an environment that will enable users to access and retrieve complete and consistent spatial datasets in an easy and secure way. Within the marine environment tools such as marine cadastre can provide a means for delineating, managing and administering legally definable offshore boundaries, however there is still need for an overarching spatial information platform to facilitate the use and administration of these tools in a holistic fashion. Currently, most of the SDI initiatives restrict their attention to the landward or seaward regions with little or no consideration of coastal zones. There is the growing and urgent need to create a seamless SDI model that bridges the gap between the terrestrial and marine environments, creating a spatially enabled land-sea interface to more effectively meet sustainable development objectives.
This paper aims to identify and discuss the main characteristics and criteria for utilisation of a “Seamless SDI model” and to examine the current barriers against implementation of this model. This would help to develop an extended framework to support a spatially enabled jurisdiction covering the land-sea interface. Ideally this extended framework would result in harmonised and universal access, sharing and integrating of coastal, marine and terrestrial spatial datasets across regions and disciplines.