Initiatives
There are many local, national and international legislative, economic and environmental drivers effecting the marine environment and coastal zone. A key tool in assisting statutory and non-statutory stakeholders involved in accessing, planning, implementation and management of this environment, is geographic information and the technologies required to access and analysis such information.
By working with the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) and other partners, SeaZone is at the forefront of driving forward and promoting both external and internally developed initiatives to bring greater understanding of the current and future issues of marine data provision and GI management as a whole.
SeaZone is unique in developing and providing content rich, base reference information for the coastal zone and marine environment and is improving the quality of marine information available to users through continual development of its products and involvement in the following initiatives:
The Digital National Framework
DNF provides a framework to promote the better integration of all kinds of information with location as the common denominator. It offers the ability to link multiple information sources to a definitive location reference through unique identifiers.
SeaZone is an active member of the DNF Expert Group and is providing further developing base reference information (SeaZone Hydrospatial) to which other objects, features and properties can be linked via topographical and topological identifiers.
Coastal Mapping Improvement Programme (CMIP)
SeaZone and UKHO are working with partners, including the Ordnance Surveys of GB, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, to create marine geographic information that is joined at the coast with land mapping. This requires joining 3D surfaces and topographic areas, together with the development an extended feature catalogue and supporting schema that comply with emerging ISO standards for geographic information. It means resolving the discrepancies between various depictions of shoreline constructions and establishing a single primary maintainer of such information, whilst ensuring that the needs of all users are catered for.
SeaZone’s CMIP initiative follows the work undertaken by Ordnance Survey, UKHO and the British Geological Survey during the UK Government’s funded Integrated Coastal Zone Mapping Project.
Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure
SeaZone is creating a spatial database which supports the growing needs of a wide range of applications unrelated to navigation. The development supports the use of geographic information by end users, as often the data can be made directly accessible (via WMS/WFS etc) or is ready for upload onto their own systems (e.g. ESRI ArcSDE).
Furthermore, GIS compatible symbology, marine application software (e.g. to display tidal information) and other supporting documentation and enabling technologies are being developed to users' benefit.
The results of the investment will include topographic mapping that is joined at the land-sea boundary, an essential pre-requisite to building national and international spatial data infrastructures (SDIs), such as that planned for Europe (INSPIRE), and a combined surface model (or DTM) that can be used to support hydrodynamic and other environmental modelling needed to consider coastal inundation.
Marine GI Standards
SeaZone is creating metadata, feature dictionaries and schema compliant with converging standards by bringing together existing knowledge of marine data to create marine topography and associated reference information in a way that is more appropriate to use in information systems, such as GIS. Existing standards for navigational data (e.g. S-57) are inappropriate because they provide detail where it is needed for charting and does not provide detail where it is not.
More general uses of marine information require detail in different areas. An example of where SeaZone is modifying the properties of features that have been captured for charting is in the introduction of a level parameter similar to that used in OS MasterMap, where 1 is below seabed, 2 is on the seabed, 3 is supported and 4 is floating. SeaZone and UKHO are working with the international marine geographic community to ensure that standards requested by the UK are compatible in Europe and worldwide.
Marine Data & Information Partnership (MDIP)
SeaZone is supporting the greater harmonisation and co-ordination of marine data in the UK. SeaZone is active on the Mapping and Applications Working Group of MDIP and is developing much of the information that underpins sustainable development, strategic environmental assessment and integrated coastal zone management, all of which are important factors in the forthcoming Marine Bill. SeaZone is highlighting the need to consolidate base reference information that either does not exist or is spread between different agencies, each with a slightly different remit for acquiring it, and leading to inconsistent and often inadequate data being held. The benefits of consolidating this information into a single database onto which other ‘associated' information can be linked are obvious.
