GIS for Coastal Zone Management - Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX New Directions for Coastal and Marine Monitoring: Web Mapping and Mobile Application Technologies Sam Ng`ang`a Macharia 6.1 THE VALUE OF COASTAL AND MARINE RESOURCES Coastal and marine areas are ever increasing in value to the welfare of nations. These areas provide natural, social and economic functions that contribute to increased quality of life. The oceans are instrumental in determining climate that beneficially affects all life on Earth (Payoyo, 1994). Other natural functions include habitat for endangered species, species breeding and resting areas, water treatment, groundwater recharge and flood attenuation. Some social and economic functions include tourism, commercial and recreational fishing, oil and gas development, and construction (Eckert, 1979; Prescott, 1985; Gomes, 1998). It is clear that coastal and marine areas are of vital importance to human life. Yet human terrestrial and marine activities have proven to have destructive effects on these areas. According to Canada’s National Program of Action (CNPA) (2000) the major threats to the health, productivity and bio-diversity of the marine environment result from human activity in the coastal areas and further inland. Approximately 80 percent of marine area contamination results from land-based activities such as municipal, industrial and agricultural waste and run-off, in addition to the deposition of atmospheric contaminants resulting from human industrial activities (CNPA, 2000; Sanger, 1987). There is a need for a wider dissemination of knowledge relevant to the importance of coastal and marine areas to the world’s well-being, and a re-evaluation of societies’ attitudes towards these spaces. Good coastal and marine governance (e.g. information dissemination, management, monitoring, etc.) is therefore a key factor in the sustainable use of these environments and will require an integrated, coordinated and equitable approach (Crowe, 2000). If governance is about decision-making and steering, then up-to-date, accurate, complete, usable information (which feeds into the acquisition of knowledge) is indispensable to governance. This is especially critical in the information age of rapid changes, interconnectivity, and globalization that have brought more information to more people making them acutely aware of the unsustainable nature of current social, © 2005 by CRC Press LLC economic and political use of marine and coastal spaces (Juillet and Roy, 1999; Rosell, 1999; Miles, 1998). Where informed decisions have to be made using real-time information there is a need for architecture that quickly disseminates information affecting coastal and marine resources. Accurate, up-to-date, complete and useful spatial information (on many levels) regarding the resources that currently exist, the nature of the environment within which those resources exist, as well as on the users of those resources is always a requirement for effective monitoring of coastal and marine areas. Information on (but not limited to) living and non-living resources, bathymetry, spatial extents (boundaries), shoreline changes, marine contaminants, seabed characteristics, water quality, and property rights all contribute to the sustainable development and good governance of coastal and marine resources (Nichols, Monahan and Sutherland, 2000; Nichols and Monahan, 1999). 6.1.1 Web Mapping and CMM Networks There are several Coastal and Marine Monitoring (CMM) networks in the world. Most of them are involved in obtaining real-time quantitative indicators that impact on coastal and marine health such as water temperature, water level and meteorological conditions (wind speed and direction, temperature, barometric pressure), together with qualitative indicators such as visual images of the beach and nearshore. Others are involved in collecting quantitative and qualitative indicators of coastal environmental quality. The networks involve government, academic and environmental NGO institutions. They consist of huge repositories containing databases of archival and current material. They vary in scope - from local to regional to national and international networks. Their results are provided in synchronous and asynchronous fashion but increasingly, electronic means of communication are being used to provide information needed by the various interest groups. The World Wide Web has had a tremendous effect on the way businesses communicate. Large amounts of information can be made available quickly and conveniently to anyone with Internet access and a web browser. The ability to distribute and view spatial information has quickly shifted from a desktop application (fat client) to a browser-based architecture (thin client). This latter architecture is referred to as thin client since the user only needs a web browser to access services and information on the web (Fitzgerald, 2000). With particular reference to spatial information, there has traditionally been the question of accessing the volumes of information, especially if it resides in several different geographical locations. The web lets a data provider make spatial information available to a wider audience. The data provider can therefore provide a virtually centralised repository of resources without having to change the physical location of the data. This prevents any problems that might arise from maintaining or updating duplicate data sources, such as limited space or corrupt data. The web therefore makes it easy to provide the most up to date spatial data (Fitzgerald, 2000). © 2005 by CRC Press LLC It is therefore common practice to go to one of several websites dedicated to CMM and download (or interact with) information about a specific geographical location that one is interested in. Whether it is the “Enviromapper for Watersheds” interactive mapping application that provides an index of watershed indicators for US aquatic resources, or the “Scorecard” mapping application, which maps toxic chemicals released from facilities, institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA are increasingly providing these CMM indicators through their websites (United States, 2003). The US Department of Commerce’s National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) provide a variety of information on their websites on oil and chemical spills, tides, marine weather, and fisheries. This information is superimposed on maps to give a geographical context to the information. The superimposition of information on maps – and the provision of such information on the web, together with limited GIS functionality – is what is referred to as web mapping, webGIS or interactive mapping. 6.1.1.1 Web Mapping Technologies The emergence of web-GIS technologies is providing the catalyst for easier collaboration, integration and cooperation among organizations with a stake in good governance and sustainable development. This is done by providing an environment for data sharing and integration over the Internet, sometimes without organizations having to make any major changes to the structure and formats of the data they maintain. The full range of analytical capabilities available in most contemporary desktop GIS however is not available on the web browser (or WebGIS client) since they are built on the thin-client concept. To include more functionalities at the client end would seem to defeat the concept of the low cost and convenience of utilizing only a web browser to access spatial data. Traditional mapping issues still pose challenges to web mapping. Some of these new technologies support different data formats (e.g. ESRI shape files, CARIS, MapInfo files etc.), projections, scales, datums, etc., with conversions and visualization being done "on the fly." Certain web-GIS technologies now facilitate the transmission, integration, visualization and analysis of spatial information stored in geographically dispersed locations. A user with permission to access the geographically dispersed data sets need only have access to a web browser in order to view, query, and analyse the data sets. In some instances however, some webGIS can only deal with data residing on one server. 6.1.1.2 A Web Mapping Example - CARIS Spatial Fusion¥ Let us briefly describe a web-mapping technology in order to explain the underlying architecture. CARIS Spatial Fusion¥ is a "web-mapping" technology that lets users integrate distributed data sources using a web browser. It is an Internet-based technology whose primary function is accessing, visualizing, and analysing heterogeneous, distributed data sources (Fitzgerald, 2000, Webmapper.com, 2000). Spatial Fusion¥ combines the speed, convenience and simplicity of the Internet with the ability to read multiple data sources in their native format. Earlier versions of Spatial Fusion¥ consisted of a customized Java © 2005 by CRC Press LLC client and a number of Fusion Data Services. On the server side, Spatial Fusion¥ was made up of the following components (CARIS, 1999, Fitzgerald, 2000): x A Web Server: One must already be running on the network. x The Orbix™ Runtime needs to be installed on every machine that hosts a Fusion Data Service. The Orbix™ Runtime lets the Spatial Fusion¥ applet and the Data Services communicate across the Internet. x Catalog Service: This service lists all of the available Fusion Data Services. x Fusion Data Services: These services must be registered with the OrbixWeb™ Implementation Repository. Each service has an accompanying configuration file that contains the name used to register the service with the daemon and the location of the data source. x Configuration Utilities: CARIS MapSmith™ and CARIS dbMaps™ are provided to help customize the display of CARIS, Oracle 8i Spatial, or Shapefile data. Recent changes in Spatial Fusion¥ Version 3.0 have removed the Orbix runtime component and replaced it with TAO ORB - an open source implementation of an Object Resource Broker using Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). In Spatial Fusion¥, the Object Request Broker (ORB) is the broker for information from the java servlets to various data services. The servlet container is Tomcat developed by the Apache Software foundation to manage and invoke servlets when requested. The normal setup is to have a web server such as Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) conFigured to connect to Tomcat. When an action is performed, the Spatial Fusion¥ applet sends a request to a servlet, which is handled by the Jakarta Tomcat Servlet container. The request is then sent by the servlet to the data services through the ORB (CARIS, 2003). As far as the user is concerned, they simply download the Spatial Fusion¥ applet from a web server. At that point, a user can easily open data from any fusion service they have access to, providing them with a secure and fully scalable environment (CARIS, 1999, Webmapper.com, 2000). In addition, CARIS Spatial Fusion Developer¥ lets users customize the client, so that specialized applets can be rapidly built in a drag and drop environment, giving the ability to tailor applets for specific users (Fitzgerald, 2000). Thin client web mapping applications such as Spatial Fusion¥ have traditionally depended on “wired” infrastructure because large amounts of spatial information have to be sent from the server to the client. The need to have information provided on mobile devices such as PDAs and cell phones is however driving information dissemination towards a wireless infrastructure. But would there be a need for wireless access to CMM networks? Is the general public ready to embrace this technology? In the following section we address these questions. © 2005 by CRC Press LLC GIS SERVER HTML Java INTERNET Applet Java Servlets ORB Client Computer Data Services Figure 6.1 CARIS Spatial Fusion Architecture (from the CARIS Spatial Fusion Administrators Guide) 6.2 RE-ENGINEERING MARINE MONITORING NETWORKS There exists in every jurisdiction a public policy issue associated with information collection (McLaughlin, 1991). This issue is related to the notion of providing ready and efficient access to information about resources, and rights associated with them, to all members of the community. The public is defining itself as an individual property owner – the property being the marine commons and its resources – and is realigning itself to be a primary decision maker. Most people are therefore interested in how resources are being utilized and whether resource use is being policed effectively. Coastal and marine monitoring networks fulfill the role of providing information effectively. But they are also builders of communities of interest i.e. a forum where participants are able to interact on a specific topic. These online communities are valuable as they are increasingly providing forums for like minded individuals to participate in the decision-making process. With more citizens being involved in advocacy efforts and words like “stewardship of © 2005 by CRC Press LLC ... - tailieumienphi.vn