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From July 16 to 20, 2007, international partners in a trans- \nAtlantic workshop series on coastal mapping and informatics, \nheld a workshop on the campus of Oregon State University \nentitled “Coastal Atlas Interoperability.” The workshop engaged \n27 participants from 6 countries, representing 17 organizations \nand multiple areas of scientific and technicial expertise. This \nmeeting was a follow-up to a successful first workshop entitled \n“Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases,” hosted by \nthe Coastal and Marine Resources Centre (CMRC) at University \nCollege Cork in Ireland in July 2006 (O’Dea et al., 2007). While \nthat first workshop examined state-of-the-art developments in \ncoastal web atlases (CWAs) from the Europe and the U.S., shared several case studies and \nlessons learned, and established key issues and recommendations related to the design, data \nrequirements, technology and institutional capacity needed for these atlases, the purpose of \nthe second workshop was to examine best practices for achieving interoperability between \nCWAs. Given that no CWA functions alone as an island, and is often part of a larger \nuniverse of resources that is needed for effective marine spatial planning, resource \nmanagement, and emergency planning, CWAs must build a common approach toward \nmanaging and disseminating the coastal data, maps and information that they contain. \n \nWorkshop participants examined the issue of semantic interoperability (where concepts, \nterminology, even abbreviations that are shared between two or more individuals, systems, \nor organizations are understood by all to mean the same thing) and found this to be an \nimportant prerequisite for the integrated approach needed when working with a broader \nnetwork of CWAs. For example, the terminology used to describe similar data can vary \nbetween specialties or regions, which can complicate data searches and integration. Use of \nthe word “seabed” in Europe versus use of the word “seafloor” to describe the same feature \nin North America is a good example of this scenario, as is the interchangeable use of \n“coastline” versus “shoreline” in both regions. Agreements on content/semantic \ninteroperability can help to eliminate such problems, making searches between disparate, \nbut mutually beneficial, projects feasible. Ontologies provide the mechanism for enabling \nthis, and workshop participants gained hands-on experience with some of the effective tools \nand approaches for creating ontologies and organizing them in catalogs, as presented by \nrepresentatives of the Marine Metadata Interoperability (MMI) project. Presenters provided \nexamples from use cases and ontologies based on recent research and the outcomes of the \n2005 MMI Advancing Domain Vocabularies workshop (Graybeal et al., 2006). \n \nDuring the workshop a project was outlined to develop a demonstration prototype as a \nproof-of-concept to inter-relate metadata and other information between two initial CWAs \n(the Marine Irish Digital Atlas or MIDA, , and the Oregon Coastal Atlas \nor OCA, ). The prototype is in the form of a catalogue services \nfor the Web (CSW), where web map services (WMS) will be registered. It may not be \nimmediately obvious how Oregon and Ireland may need to be interoperable, but these two \nmature atlas efforts can be used as a testbed for interoperability. Both provide interactive \naccess to spatial data and metadata via web GIS, use similar technologies (open source \nMinnesota MapServer running on Apache web services), and contain metadata meeting \nnational/international standards (i.e., FGDC and ISO). This proof-of-concept may then be \nused 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 \nthe MIDA can do the same for building and strengthening atlas networks with the UK, \nBelgium, and other parts of Europe). The prototype is therefore envisioned as a seed \napplication, a template of sorts that can be used by many others and develop further from \nthere. \n \nThe workshop on “Coastal Atlas Interoperability” is another step toward long-term goals of \nthe trans-Atlantic workshop team to provide recommendations for best practices on all \naspects of coastal web mapping, and to develop a cadre of scientists who will play a \nleadership role in forging international collaborations and technical solutions of value to the \nparticipating nations. Toward this end, the technical experts, scientists, decision makers and \npractitioners of the workshops in Ireland and Oregon have now organized under the (as yet) \ninformal International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN; see list of participating institutions in \nAppendix A). The strategic aim of ICAN is to share experiences and to find common \nsolutions to CWA development whilst ensuring maximum relevance and added value for \nthe end users. This is a mutually beneficial international activity with complementary \nstrengths in evidence on both sides of the Atlantic, and with the additional provision of \ninternational experience for students and junior researchers. \n \nThe long-term view is for global level operational interoperability which will evolve as the \nICAN community strives to increase awareness of the opportunities that exist for increased \ncoastal and marine data sharing among policy makers and resource managers as strategic \nusers of a CWA. We see ICAN participants as playing a leadership role in forging \ninternational collaborations of value to the participating nations. A major goal is to help \nbuild a functioning digital atlas of the global coast based on the principle of sharing \ndistributed information. We will go about this by organizing a cooperative interoperability \nand network project to globally integrate locally-maintained coastal atlases as the premier \nsource of spatial reference information about the coastal zone of all coastlines throughout \nthe world. We will do this by developing community-held constraints on mapping and \npresentation conventions to maximize the comparability and reliability of information about \nour coasts. This is done to provide a basis for rationally-informed discussion, debate and \nnegotiation of sustainable management policies for our societies, nations and people \nthroughout the world. This has tremendous potential to be relevant not only on both sides \nof the Atlantic for the North American and European partners involved, but also has \nimplications for global spatial data infrastructures and Internet mapping projects. \n \nBased on the success of the workshop in Oregon, the European Environment Agency will \nhost a third workshop from July 7-9, 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark, to significantly \nadvance these goals by examining how communities in Europe can use the \nrecommendations and prototype developed thus far to improve their data systems’ \ninteroperability. As a result, ICAN will: \n1. exhibit the proof-of-concept conceived of at the Oregon workshop and validate first \noutcomes, \n2. share results to inform and attract a larger population of potential stakeholders of \nthe activity, and \n3. develop a long-term strategy for effective governance of ICAN and further \napplications.
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