Progress and Grand Challenges of Marine GIS



Conclusion
The demands on the marine GIS community for increased precision, accuracy and more detailed analytical models have been increasing rapidly over the last several years and will continue to increase in the future. This in turn is forcing a rapidly increasing need for significantly more robust:
  • data dissemination tools;
  • spatio-temporal data standards & protocols;
  • distributed processing & collaboration tools; and
  • dynamic modeling & analysis tools.

As these demands for "precision management" and robust tools increase, it will be appropriate and timely to re-examine underlying data models in GIS and to develop new approaches particularly with regard to large-scale regional, interdisciplinary academic research projects. Such projects, within the new paradigm of "distributed" collaboration, will have an impact on both marine and terrestrial GIS. And marine GIS will continue to pose fundamental questions in the representation and analysis of spatial and temporal information, chief of which may be "how does one represent combinations of geometric objects and scalar fields, especially when the data are 'in flux'?" In order to take full advantage of new innovations in marine spatial analysis, end users will need to keep up with emerging trends from the information systems, spatial analysis and statistical analysis communities.

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[portions reprinted by permission of Oregon State University Press from the epilogue of the new book of Place Matters: Geospatial Tools for Marine Science, Conservation and Management …. ÓOregon State University Press. All rights reserved. More text and information at http://www.ecotrust.org/placematters ]