Application of GIS technology for Coastal Zone Management: a hydrographer perspective  Lt. Commander R. K. Bhardwaj NAtional Hydrographic Office, Dehradun nho@sancharnet.in Abstract The objective of this paper is to outline the importance of GIS technology for coastal zone management. Following a definition of the coastal zone, and , short description of its peculiarities and the urgency of its management, the paper describes the use of GIS technology in coastal zone management, its advantages and the consideration for accuracy. This followed by information and data required for coastal zone management and the application area in coastal management. The conclusion emphases the importance of geographical information system in coastal zone management for efficient data handling and analysis of geographically related data. Introduction Coastal zone for the purpose of this paper, shall mean the area, on both side of the actual land water interface, where both territorial as well as Marine environmental influences each other. In addition, interaction between various natural processes and human activity are important factor in the coastal area. The coastal zone shows high population density with large number of urban conglomeration and in consequence, a fast population growth. Again as a consequence, coastal zone are characterised by a high concentration of economic and, in particular, industrial activities with all the resulting problems of resource consumption, waste management and technological risk. On coastal water side, fisheries and aquaculture exploits a generally highly productive system. Very specific, and valuable as well as vulnerable, typical coastal ecosystems include estuaries, salt marshes, mangroves, coral reefs etc. Offshore activities such as oil and gas, as well as mining, are additional forms of exploitation of the coastal zone. In addition, the coastal zone is also the recipient of all water borne waste streams, primarily attributable to agriculture, its fertilizers and agrochemical, and all treated and untreated waste water the hinter land produce in their respective catchment. They all drained in to the coastal waters. Therefore, there is an urgent need for intelligent management of coastal zone. GIS Technology and Coastal Management Determining the accurate length of the coastline is important for such coastal zone management application as shoreline classification, monitoring erosion, mapping biological resources, habitat assessment and for the planing and response to nature (e.g. storm surges) and man made disasters (e.g. oil spills). Coastal zone management, by definition, is spatial management. Geo referenced spatial data is map data in a digital form which mean that each of the earth’s features that are stored as spatial data has a unique geographic reference such as latitude and longitude. The increasing use of spatial data and GIS (Geographic Information System) by organizations and researchers is a valuable tool to help solve the planning and management issues in the coastal zone. There are many different Geographic Information Systems in use today and they tend to differ in certain aspects such as “how they link geographic location with information about those locations, the accuracy with which they specify Geographic location, the level of analysis they perform and the way they present information as graphic drawing”. What is GIS? At this point it is useful to consider exactly what Geographical Information System is (and what it is not). The definition of GIS are numerous but a useful one is that it is a data base system in which most of the data are spatially indexed and upon which a set of procedures operates in order to answer queries about the spatial entities in the data base. Thus it is an information system whose relation basis is co-ordinate data of the form X, Y, Z, a concept familiar to the surveyor. The function of an information system is to improve a user’s ability to make decision in research, planning and management; a GIS is therefore essentially a management tool.
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