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Coastal Spatial Data Infrasturcture (CSDI): African requirements and Responses
L. Celliers
Oceanographic Research Institute, Durban, South Africa
louis@ori.org.za
R.A. Longhorn
Info-Dynamics Research Associates Ltd, Bredene, Belgium
ral@alum.mit.edu
K. Lance
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation,
Enschede, the Netherlands
lance@itc.nl
M. Odido
OdinAfrica, Nairobi, Kenya
m.odido@unesco.org
INTRODUCTION
The term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) refers to a collection of fundamental geospatial technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that encourages and improves the availability, access and exploitation of spatial data. An SDI provides a framework for spatial data discovery, evaluation, and application for users and providers within all levels of government, the commercial as well as the non-profit sector, academia and individuals in civil society. Conceptually, information infrastructure, and thus SDI, is a logical extension to other infrastructure necessary for ongoing development, such as transportation, telecommunication networks, health and education. As such, the drivers for SDIs have always been national governments, as reflected in various government decrees regarding creation of national SDIs (NSDI). However, most attempts at creating an SDI at national level have yet to be fully implemented. At regional level, even less has been achieved in creating true infrastructure and globally, the main focus has been on community building, consensus building, creating vision, and defining overall strategy and goals (Longhorn 2003a). In the authors’ opinion, this is also a true reflection of the status quo of SDI in Africa at both national and regional levels.
Several nations are also engaged in the development of specific coastal zone SDI (CSDI) components in their national SDI plans (Longhorn 2003a, b). Coastal managers and researchers know that the coastal zone is a difficult and complex area to manage due to the overlapping of offshore, near-shore, shoreline and inshore physical geography, hydrography and bathymetry, as well as jurisdictional and organisational overlaps. A wide variety of local, national and regional agencies are responsible for the different physical areas and uses of the coastal zone, e.g. fisheries, environment, agriculture, transport (inland and marine), urban planning, national mapping and the hydrographic service. Due to the high economic value of coastal and marine activities, and to the social value of coastal zones for quality of life, managing the coastal zone is a key component of the socio-economic framework in most nations with coastlines.
This paper provides an overview of the status of CSDI in Africa. It briefly introduces CSDI initiatives worldwide and then summarizes existing coastal and marine efforts in Africa that are addressing data management issues to varying degrees. Next, the paper proposes the development, jointly by both the government and private sector, of a thematic information framework for the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Actors in the region already have a high level of understanding of the complex network of which they are part, spanning both administrative boundaries and inland, coastal, and marine interfaces. Furthermore, coastal stakeholders tend to be innovative in their planning and decision-making, marrying science and management. Thus, a coastal SDI effort may prove to be enlightening to all SDI initiatives.
The status of CSDIs elsewhere
Currently, only a few examples exist of the development of specified SDIs for individual sectors such as the coastal zone, the most notable being the United States CSDI, led by the Coastal Services Centre of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a marine information data 'partnership' (MDIP) (IACMST, 2006; Cotton, 2006) launched in the United Kingdom, a Canadian MGDI (marine geospatial data infrastructure) (Gillespi, et al, 2000), and marine boundary and cadastre initiatives in Australia. At the regional level, various projects exist within Europe which are developing potentially useful components of a marine or coastal SDI (Jonkers, 2006; Longhorn, 2005; MOTIIVE, 2006), yet there is no single vision or strategy for implementing such a thematic SDI within the regional generic SDI initiative, INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe). At the global level, components of a marine SDI exist within programmes such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission's IODE (International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange) Project, but the coastal information elements of such programmes are not well developed (Longhorn, 2003c). Oceans 21 – GIS for Coastal Management and Coastal Education, a cooperative programme of the IOC and IGU (International Geographical Union), contains a research theme that focuses on extending national, regional and global SDIs from onshore to offshore (Green et al, 2004).
Regional initiatives
Furthermore, Africa is currently embarking on creating national, regional and continental scale SDIs and geographic data standards and priority data areas are being defined by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) GeoInformation Team (http://geoinfo.uneca.org/sdiafrica/default1.htm) and EIS-Africa (Environmental Information Systems – Africa), as discussed in their joint document Fundamental Geospatial Data Sets for Africa, Chapter 2 “Determination of the Fundamental Geospatial Datasets for Africa through a User Needs Analysis – A Synthesis Report” (Schwabe et al. 2006). The importance of coastlines seems to be recognised even though an EIS e-mail user needs survey did not place coastline data high on the priority list (scored 20th, with a weighted score of 0.625 in a list of 23 datasets with weighted score measurements ranging between a high of 2.750 and a low of 0.625). However, the relatively low ranking of 'coastline' in this survey could simply reflect the audience who participated in the survey by EIS-Africa and mimics a similar experience in Europe, when neither hydrography nor coastlines were going to be considered as part of the 'core' spatial data requirement for Europe – simply because there were no 'experts' with marine or coastal experience sitting on the expert panel at the time the initial lists were being constructed (in the EU-funded ETEMII Project in 2000).
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