ALBERT

Description: From November 16 to 20, 2009, the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) held a workshop on “Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean” at the Adriatico Guest House of the UNESCO International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. The workshop (aka “ICAN 4”) engaged 32 participants from 12 countries, representing 26 organizations and multiple areas of scientific and technical expertise. This meeting was a follow-up to the successful 2008 workshop on “Federated Coastal Atlases: Building the Interoperable Approach” (aka “ICAN 3”) held in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as the 2007 workshop on “Coastal Atlas Interoperability” (aka “ICAN 2” in Corvallis, Oregon, USA) and the 2006 meeting “Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases” (aka “ICAN 1” in Cork, Ireland). ICAN 3 continued the momentum by identifying the additional opportunities for partnering on coastal web atlas development throughout Europe, demonstrating the atlas interoperability prototype to the European Environment Agency and its many partners, and initiating the development of a long-term strategy and governance model for ICAN. ICAN 2 examined best practices for achieving interoperability between atlases, and led to the design of a demonstration interoperability prototype using the metadata catalogues of two atlases. ICAN 1 examined state-of-the-art developments in coastal web atlases (CWAs) from Europe and the U.S., shared several case studies and lessons learned, and established key issues and recommendations related to the design, data requirements, technology and institutional capacity needed for these atlases. At the conclusion of ICAN 3 it was abundantly clear that ICAN had grown from a simple idea to the cusp of a formal virtual organization, which had captured the interest of the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Commission, UNESCO, and several government agencies, companies, non-governmental organizations, and universities. However, much more work needed to be accomplished. Therefore, the activities of ICAN 4 included: - Discussions of final implementation structures for governance (including formal procedures for receiving new members), technical activities, and continued identification of funding opportunities, so that ICAN can formally incorporate as a virtual organization (aka “community of practice”). - Presentations on emerging atlases in European countries (especially the Mediterranean) and beyond that are making themselves relevant through policy, environmental and socio-economic indicator work and related themes. - Continued progress on our ontology and semantic interoperability work, with an eye also toward articulating the benefits of semantic interoperability at a broader scale to non-specialists. In this we look forward to the advice and assistance of MMI and SeaDataNet, as well as to the new NETMAR (Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data) initiative, which has already developed conceptual framework documents in this area. To this end, we also: -- Held a small “workshop within a workshop” for atlas administrators on how to become a new node in interoperability prototype. -- Initiated strategies on making further improvements to all those nodes (according to the Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) principles of sharing information for multiple purposes, using data and systems that are accessible and interoperable). -- Facilitated further work on partnerships, infrastructure and data exchange formats, all with the overall objective of enabling the nodes to share and communicate with each other, avoid duplication, and streamline information management. - Presentations and discussion of user issues, including better knowledge of our atlas users, their needs, and on continued inventory, assessment, and evaluation of atlases. To this end, we discussed as part of a small “workshop within a workshop” how to improve the functionality of CWAs for general users, especially as the technology continues to change. - Small group meetings on potential funding opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic (European Union, US National Science Foundation and government agencies) in order to continue the work of ICAN. - Initiation of plans for a major ICAN presence at Littoral 2010 in London (European ICAN partners), as well as a standalone ICAN Americas meeting in Wisconsin, USA. In addition, the ICAN workshop took place around a two-day Workshop on Maritime and Coastal Information Systems, organised by the EEA’s Environmental Information and Observation Network (EIONET), which was open to ICAN 4 attendees as well. The main objective of this meeting was to inform the many participating countries of the EIONET National Reference Centre (NRC) network and to allow for a first exchange of views on scope and roles in the new formation for this entity. Four participants of ICAN 4 were invited to give presentations at the EEA/EIONET workshop, which allowed EEA/EIONET to explore collaboration opportunities as a result of ICAN’s emergence. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) had originally awarded support for two ICAN workshops, so there will be a 5th international workshop (aka ICAN 5), at the headquarters of the UNESCO International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) in Oostende, Belgium, August 31 to September 2, 2011. IODE will co-host CoastGIS 2011 in Oostende immediately following ICAN 5. Objectives of ICAN 5 will include follow-up activities that we did not have time to accomplish at ICAN 4, including: - Continued progress on our ontology and semantic interoperability work, but with an eye also toward articulating the benefits of semantic interoperability at a broader scale, to non-specialists. - Continued engagement and servicing of users of coastal web atlases, and on continued inventory, assessment, and evaluation of atlases. - Revisiting the main recommendations of the ICAN 1, especially evaluating atlas impact, and developing analysis and decision-support tools in atlases. - Forming proposal teams and submissions to the next available and appropriate NSF and other grant competitions (e.g., NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education, NSF Community-Based Data Interoperability Networks, NOAA, European Framework Program, InterReg, and ESF ). - Exchanging lessons learned in spatial data infrastructure between the US, European INSPIRE and other national and regional efforts. - Continued implementation and improvement of new governance, strategic planning, and technical working groups.

Description: US National Science Foundation; Oregon State University; Coastal & Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Ireland; ERI; UNESCO; ITCP; ISMAR; European Environmental Agency; Marine Institute (Ireland)

Description: This workshop was held 16-20 November 2009, at the Adriatico Guest House, UNESCO International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. The workshop web site is http://ican.science.oregonstate.edu/ican4. Wright, D.J., Dwyer, N., Kopke, K., and O’Dea, L., 2010. Report of International Coastal Atlas Network Workshop 4: Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean, UNESCO International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 16-20 November 2009.

Description: Published

Description: From July 16 to 20, 2007, international partners in a trans- Atlantic workshop series on coastal mapping and informatics, held a workshop on the campus of Oregon State University entitled “Coastal Atlas Interoperability.” The workshop engaged 27 participants from 6 countries, representing 17 organizations and multiple areas of scientific and technicial expertise. This meeting was a follow-up to a successful first workshop entitled “Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases,” hosted by the Coastal and Marine Resources Centre (CMRC) at University College Cork in Ireland in July 2006 (O’Dea et al., 2007). While that first workshop examined state-of-the-art developments in coastal web atlases (CWAs) from the Europe and the U.S., shared several case studies and lessons learned, and established key issues and recommendations related to the design, data requirements, technology and institutional capacity needed for these atlases, the purpose of the second workshop was to examine best practices for achieving interoperability between CWAs. Given that no CWA functions alone as an island, and is often part of a larger universe of resources that is needed for effective marine spatial planning, resource management, and emergency planning, CWAs must build a common approach toward managing and disseminating the coastal data, maps and information that they contain. Workshop participants examined the issue of semantic interoperability (where concepts, terminology, even abbreviations that are shared between two or more individuals, systems, or organizations are understood by all to mean the same thing) and found this to be an important prerequisite for the integrated approach needed when working with a broader network of CWAs. For example, the terminology used to describe similar data can vary between specialties or regions, which can complicate data searches and integration. Use of the word “seabed” in Europe versus use of the word “seafloor” to describe the same feature in North America is a good example of this scenario, as is the interchangeable use of “coastline” versus “shoreline” in both regions. Agreements on content/semantic interoperability can help to eliminate such problems, making searches between disparate, but mutually beneficial, projects feasible. Ontologies provide the mechanism for enabling this, and workshop participants gained hands-on experience with some of the effective tools and approaches for creating ontologies and organizing them in catalogs, as presented by representatives of the Marine Metadata Interoperability (MMI) project. Presenters provided examples from use cases and ontologies based on recent research and the outcomes of the 2005 MMI Advancing Domain Vocabularies workshop (Graybeal et al., 2006). During the workshop a project was outlined to develop a demonstration prototype as a proof-of-concept to inter-relate metadata and other information between two initial CWAs (the Marine Irish Digital Atlas or MIDA, 〈http://mida.ucc.ie〉, and the Oregon Coastal Atlas or OCA, 〈http://www.coastalatlas.net〉). The prototype is in the form of a catalogue services for the Web (CSW), where web map services (WMS) will be registered. It may not be immediately obvious how Oregon and Ireland may need to be interoperable, but these two mature atlas efforts can be used as a testbed for interoperability. Both provide interactive access to spatial data and metadata via web GIS, use similar technologies (open source Minnesota MapServer running on Apache web services), and contain metadata meeting national/international standards (i.e., FGDC and ISO). This proof-of-concept may then be used to make connections within regional partnerships (e.g., the OCA can use lessons learned in developing a regional network of CWAs with Washington and California, while the MIDA can do the same for building and strengthening atlas networks with the UK, Belgium, and other parts of Europe). The prototype is therefore envisioned as a seed application, a template of sorts that can be used by many others and develop further from there. The workshop on “Coastal Atlas Interoperability” is another step toward long-term goals of the trans-Atlantic workshop team to provide recommendations for best practices on all aspects of coastal web mapping, and to develop a cadre of scientists who will play a leadership role in forging international collaborations and technical solutions of value to the participating nations. Toward this end, the technical experts, scientists, decision makers and practitioners of the workshops in Ireland and Oregon have now organized under the (as yet) informal International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN; see list of participating institutions in Appendix A). The strategic aim of ICAN is to share experiences and to find common solutions to CWA development whilst ensuring maximum relevance and added value for the end users. This is a mutually beneficial international activity with complementary strengths in evidence on both sides of the Atlantic, and with the additional provision of international experience for students and junior researchers. The long-term view is for global level operational interoperability which will evolve as the ICAN community strives to increase awareness of the opportunities that exist for increased coastal and marine data sharing among policy makers and resource managers as strategic users of a CWA. We see ICAN participants as playing a leadership role in forging international collaborations of value to the participating nations. A major goal is to help build a functioning digital atlas of the global coast based on the principle of sharing distributed information. We will go about this by organizing a cooperative interoperability and network project to globally integrate locally-maintained coastal atlases as the premier source of spatial reference information about the coastal zone of all coastlines throughout the world. We will do this by developing community-held constraints on mapping and presentation conventions to maximize the comparability and reliability of information about our coasts. This is done to provide a basis for rationally-informed discussion, debate and negotiation of sustainable management policies for our societies, nations and people throughout the world. This has tremendous potential to be relevant not only on both sides of the Atlantic for the North American and European partners involved, but also has implications for global spatial data infrastructures and Internet mapping projects. Based on the success of the workshop in Oregon, the European Environment Agency will host a third workshop from July 7-9, 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark, to significantly advance these goals by examining how communities in Europe can use the recommendations and prototype developed thus far to improve their data systems’ interoperability. As a result, ICAN will: 1. exhibit the proof-of-concept conceived of at the Oregon workshop and validate first outcomes, 2. share results to inform and attract a larger population of potential stakeholders of the activity, and 3. develop a long-term strategy for effective governance of ICAN and further applications.

Description: US National Science Foundation; Oregon State University; Coastal & Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Ireland; ERI

Description: Published

Description: From July 7 to 11, 2008, the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) held a workshop on “Federated Atlases: Building on the Interoperable Approach” at the headquarters of the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The workshop (aka “ICAN 3”) engaged 29 participants from 10 countries, representing 25 organizations and multiple areas of scientific and technical expertise. This meeting was a follow-up to the successful 2007 workshop on “Coastal Atlas Interoperability” (aka “ICAN 2”) and the 2006 meeting “Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases” (aka “ICAN 1”). These first two workshops examined state-of-the-art developments in coastal web atlases (aka CWAs) from Europe and the U.S., shared several case studies and lessons learned, established key issues and recommendations related to the design, data requirements, technology and institutional capacity needed for these atlases, and examined best practices for achieving interoperability between them, and designed a demonstration interoperability prototype using the metadata catalogues of two atlases. To continue the momentum of ICAN 1 and 2 in identifying the opportunities that exist for increased data sharing in coastal web atlases for coastal management, governance, and conservation, it was the goal of ICAN 3 to: 1. demonstrate the atlas interoperability prototype, report on the lessons learnt and decide on future technical activities; 2. attract and inform a larger group of potential stakeholders of the activity, and promote an exchange of related developments in coastal and ocean information services; and 3. develop a long-term strategy and governance model for ICAN.

Description: European Environment Agency; US National Science Foundation; European Topic Centre on Land Use and Spatial Information (ETC-LUSI); European Environmental Information and Observation Network (EIONET); Oregon State University; Coastal & Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Ireland; SeaZone Solutions Limited; the European Platform for Coastal Research (ENCORA)

Description: Workshop held 7 – 11 July 2008 at European Environment Agency Headquarters, Copenhagen, Denmark

Description: Published

Description: In recent years significant momentum has occurred in the development of Internet resources for decision makers and scientists interested in the coast. Chief among these has been the development of coastal web atlases (CWAs). While multiple benefits are derived from these tailor-made atlases (e.g., speedy access to multiple sources of coastal data and information), the potential exists to derive added value from the integration of disparate CWAs, to optimize decision making at a variety of levels and across themes. This paper describes the development of a semantic mediator prototype to provide a common access point to coastal data, maps and information from distributed CWAs. The prototype showcases how ontologies and ontology mappings can be used to integrate different heterogeneous and autonomous atlases, using the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Catalogue Services for the Web.

Description: Published

Description: Executive Summary THE IMPORTANCE OF COASTAL WEB MAPPING Governments, industry sectors, academic institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have a tremendous stake in the development and management of geospatial data resources. Coastal mapping plays an important role in informing decision makers on issues such as national sovereignty, resource management, maritime safety and hazard assessment. Efforts to improve data accessibility are driven by legislation on topics such as Environmental management, open access of public sector information and data standards and harmonisation. The development of Geographic Information System (GIS) based web mapping products has improved the usability of GISs by non-specialists. This, combined with community needs, has resulted in the growth of a niche group of interactive coastal web atlases (CWAs) around the world, developed to address the needs of the coastal and marine community. The 2006 Green Paper on Future Maritime Policy in the European Union stated: “a veritable Atlas of EU coastal waters… could serve as an instrument for spatial planning” (European Commission 2006, p. 35), illustrating the increasing recognition of the potential of CWAs, even at an international level. TRANS-ATLANTIC WORKSHOPS ON COASTAL MAPPING AND INFORMATICS Funding was obtained through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Marine RTDI programme in Ireland to organize two trans-Atlantic workshops on coastal mapping and informatics. The first workshop, entitled “Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases,” was hosted by the Coastal and Marine Resources Centre (CMRC) at University College Cork in Ireland in July 2006. This workshop brought together key experts from Europe and North America to examine state-of-the-art CWA developments, share lessons learned, determine future needs in mapping and informatics for the coastal practitioner community and identify potential opportunities for collaboration. COASTAL WEB ATLAS FEATURES A coastal web atlas is a collection of digital maps and datasets with supplementary tables, illustrations and information that systematically illustrate the coast, oftentimes with cartographic and decision-support tools, and all of which are accessible via the Internet. Access to the various components can be provided in different ways. The typical CWA contains a number of general features, including: geospatial data and metadata; a map area for data display; a legend and/or layer list; tools to interact with the map and data; data attribute tables; topical information; powerful server and software technologies; and a wellrounded atlas design to meet atlas and user needs. COASTAL WEB ATLAS CASE STUDIES As part of the workshop, a number of representative coastal web atlas case studies from both sides of the Atlantic were presented by developers. This report provides an overview of the case studies, which highlight key aspects of CWA development and operations such as atlas purpose, institutional support, technology and functionality. Those included as case studies are: The UK Coastal and Marine Resource Atlas; De Kustatlas Online, Belgium; The Marine Irish Digital Atlas; The Oregon Coastal Atlas; North Coast Explorer, Oregon; and Mapping Tools for Coastal Management, Virginia. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS ANALYSIS During the workshop, four working groups were established to identify issues related to atlas design, data, technology and institutional capacity. Each working group focussed its discussion by carrying out a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis. CONSIDERATIONS FOR ATLAS DEVELOPMENT The design and usability of an atlas are keys to its success. An atlas should clearly communicate its purpose, be visually appealing, be kept as simple as possible, use efficient technology and management systems and have a flexible design to enable growth and change over time. Ultimately its success relies on the atlas users, so efforts should be made regularly to ensure that it meets the needs of those users. An output of the workshop was a list of considerations for atlas design and implementation on topics such as data content and display, metadata, atlas interface, atlas tools, technology, user feedback and support for maintenance and future developments.

Description: US National Science Foundation; Oregon State University; Coastal & Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Ireland; ERI

Description: Report on Coastal Mapping and Informatics Trans-Atlantic Workshop 1: Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases, 24th - 28th July 2006, University College Cork, Cork, IRELAND, This is the report of the workshop that led to the founding of ICAN

Description: Published