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COPYRIGHT 2006 Coastal Education & Research Foundation, Inc.
ABSTRACT
JUDE, S.; JONES, A.P.; ANDREWS, J.E., and BATEMAN, I.J., 2006. Visualisation for participatory coastal zone management: a case study of the Norfolk coast, England. Journal of Coastal Research, 22(6), 1527-1538. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.
It is widely recognised that organisations involved in coastal management must take steps to improve the ways in which stakeholders and the public are involved in coastal decision-making. In particular, there needs to be more emphasis on improving participation, consultation, and information provision throughout the process. In recognition of this, there is a need to develop new techniques that could aid the communication of coastal information to the public. It has been suggested that some of these techniques might involve the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Whilst GIS are widely used by coastal managers, their application is hampered by the highly technical output that they often produce. However, the advent of a new type of system known as virtual reality GIS enables the likely effects of coastal management decisions to be presented in a format that is suitable for widespread consultation and dissemination. A proposed managed realignment scheme on the north Norfolk coast, England, is used to describe an integrated GIS methodology allowing the production of virtual reality representations of the current site environment and simulations of what might be present after the intervention. Both static and user-navigable visualisations have been produced because these lend themselves to both paper and electronic publication. Comparisons between the alternative methods are presented along with a discussion of the technical, user, and institutional issues surrounding the potential application of the methodology. It is argued that the techniques presented have the potential to stimulate meaningful discussion during the consultation process, although further research is still required to determine the exact form this might take.
ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: GIS, visualisation, decision support.
INTRODUCTION
One of the United Kingdom's principal geographical features is its extensive coastline, created by a multitude of land and ocean processes, subjected to anthropogenic influences, and characterised by a variety of environments. Coastal management in the United Kingdom is underpinned by the development and implementation of Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs). Introduced in 1995, SMPs provide long-term sustainable coastal defence policies and management objectives for sediment subcells, discrete areas of sand and shingle movement within larger sediment transport cells, and are developed through cooperative discussions between the numerous organisations involved in managing the coastline (POTTS, 1999; PURNELL, 1996). Shoreline Management Plans can encompass a range of management options for each of the smaller coastal management units identified within the sediment subcell, including "do nothing," hold the line of existing defences, advance the line of existing defences, or retreat the line (ASH, NUNN, and LAWTON, 1996). However, whilst they define the long-term management objectives, individual management schemes remain subject to economic and environmental appraisal as and when they are proposed.
Amongst the key challenges facing coastal zone managers are the need to widen public consultation and strengthen public participation during the selection of management options and the requirement to improve the information dissemination process once decisions have been made. Shoreline Management Plans are complicated documents for those without prior technical knowledge of coastal processes, and the method in which they are prepared has been criticised for lacking adequate scope for public participation. It has been argued that this has led to suspicion amongst local communities regarding the beneficiaries of the plans (O'RIORDAN and WARD, 1997). Traditionally, SMPs and environmental statements have only been disseminated to a limited number of organisations and interested individuals. Shoreline Management Plans have generally been paper-based and disseminated with simple two-dimensional (2D) maps used to illustrate the plans. However, these are lengthy documents that are often highly technical in nature.
In the United Kingdom, it has been realised that access to the information contained in SMPs needs to be widened and that the policies outlined in the SMP must be seen to be acceptable to the general public (O'RIORDAN and WARD, 1997; POTTS, 1999). Indeed, a government review of the SMP process identified very significant difficulties associated with facilitating public participation (MAFF, 2000). In line with this, the review called for innovative new communication techniques to be developed and incorporated into future SMP documents and consultation programmes (MAFF, 2000). The problems found in the United Kingdom are mirrored elsewhere. For example, the European Union (EU) Demonstration Programme on Integrated Coastal Zone Management suggested that stakeholders should be more involved in the development and implementation of coastal management plans (CEC, 2000a). This view is now reflected in EU recommendations promoting participatory planning in coastal management and encouraging the development of systems that assist in the monitoring and dissemination of coastal zone information (CEC, 2000b).
The further development of new methodologies that will help enable interested individuals and organisations to be informed about shoreline management decisions in the most inclusive manner possible is clearly needed (BELFIORE, 2000; ENGLISH NATURE, 2005; KING, 1999). Indeed, KING (1999) has specifically called for the use of electronic methods to facilitate communication between coastal managers and the public, whilst others have highlighted the need for research to exploit the potential of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in educating, promoting, and involving the public in coastal planning and decision-making (BARTLETT and WRIGHT, 2000).
Over the last 10-15 years, coastal applications of GIS have evolved as the technology has become more affordable and user friendly. Nowadays, their use is commonplace in many organisations involved in managing the coast, and they are frequently cited as one of the tools associated with best practice (e.g., BARTLETT, 1994). For example organisations such as the UK Environment Agency make heavy use of GIS to integrate a range of coastal information to assist with shoreline decision-making (TOWNEND and LEGGETT, 1992). Other common applications of GIS in the coastal zone include sea level rise and flood risk modelling (THUMERER, JONES, and BROWN, 2000; VAN DER MEULEN, WITTER, and ARENS, 1991; WEBSTER et al., 2004), flood defence management (HAMANN and HOFSTEDE, 1999), studies of coastal morphodynamics and coastline change (HUTTEMEYER, 1999; PAN, 2004; RAPER, 2000), and coastal resource management (BOURCIER, 2004; WELCH, REMILLARD, and ALBERTS, 1992).
However, GIS do not provide a universal solution despite their potential for assisting informed decision-making (BARTLETT, 2000; O'REGAN, 1999). Ultimately, a traditional GIS and its output is orientated towards experts with knowledge of application-specific terminology, as opposed to those who often have the most to lose from management decisions. These limitations are compounded by the fact that coastal decision-makers are themselves often overwhelmed by the complexity of many GIS applications (GREEN, 1995). Consequently, the GIS-based coastal management systems that have been developed are generally simply employed to produce thematic maps of coastal areas for SMPs, and much of the potential of the technology remains unrealised.
One technology with the potential to widen communication in shoreline management planning is virtual reality GIS (VRGIS). A VRGIS is in many aspects similar to a traditional GIS, but it encompasses virtual reality visualisations as a key output and interaction method (WILLIAMS, 1999). The virtual reality (VR) aspect of VRGIS has evolved mainly as an interface technology within which user interaction issues are of key importance, whilst the more traditional GIS acts as a data storage and manipulation technology. Similarly, new software enabling the visualisation of GIS data in a recognisable format is also becoming more widely available through photorealistic rendering packages, allowing GIS users to apply terrain and landcover detail to data that would otherwise be presented as a traditional 2D map.
The important role of visualisation methodologies to assist with environmental decision support has been recorded by a number of authors who have highlighted the need to develop these techniques to assist in the presentation of environmental models (BISHOP, 1994; BISHOP and KARADAGLIS, 1997). The recent development of VRGIS and their associated visualisation techniques offers an opportunity to further develop public involvement in coastal zone management by providing the functionality needed to generate realistic VR visualisations of different shoreline management outcomes. It is felt that these might prove to be a significant advance on more traditional dissemination techniques. Using an example case study, we report in this article on research that is developing an integrated VRGIS methodology for the assessment, visualisation, and communication of the environmental impacts of several proposed real-world management schemes.
METHODOLOGY
The area...
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