International coastal experts descend on UOW

Jul 17, 2006

CoastGIS 2006, the seventh in a series of international conferences on research and the application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to the marine and coastal zone, was held at the University of Wollongong from 13 July to 15 July.

It was the first time the symposium has been held in the Southern Hemisphere.

Conference organisers said that about 150 participants from 16 different countries, including university researchers, hydrographers, marine scientists, and coastal managers attended the event. The scientific and applied papers considered the ways in which data about the coastal zone can be collected, stored in databases and visualised using computer mapping and other sophisticated visualisation techniques.

The idea for a series of symposia entitled CoastGIS was born from the collaboration of the International Cartographic Association's Commission on Marine Cartography and the International Geographical Union's Commission on Coastal Systems.

In the early 1990s, both were aiming to find a vehicle through which coastal issues and technological processes could be examined and means by which recent advances in the mapping of the world's coastal zones could jointly find an outlet.

Both Commissions were particularly interested in the then early potential of GIS in offering great opportunities for data access, manipulation and presentation as well as data management for those entrusted with making decisions that have an impact on the use of the world's coasts by humans.

The previous six CoastGIS Symposia have been held in Ireland, Scotland twice, France, Canada and Italy.

The latest conference at UOW was supported by the Australian Hydrographic Service as Principal Partner and Geoscience Australia, the Department of Environment and Heritage and the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Organisation (US) as Symposium Partners.

The local organisers of CoastGIS'06, Professor Colin Woodroffe in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Ron Furness, of the International Cartographic Association and formerly at the Hydrographic Office, conducted a very successful regional version, entitled CoastalGIS 2003, at the University of Wollongong in 2003.

UOW Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, officially opened the conference on 13 July.