05 January 2004

Call for sea change in coastal mapping

Two-year project highlights major benefits of data integration

Integrating land mapping, marine charts and geological information around Britain's coastline would be a huge boon to both public authorities and businesses, greatly improving coastal management and potentially saving millions of pounds in costs.

That is the conclusion of a two-year project which has just completed trials to unify digital mapping of the land, sea and geology of Southern England – from Shoreham in West Sussex to Lyme Regis in Dorset, including the Isle of Wight – along with areas of coastline around the Firth of Forth in Scotland and Milford Haven (Wales).

Now the three partners behind the Integrated Coastal Zone Mapping Project are seeking funds to create nationally-consistent data of the entire 18,000 kilometre (11,000 mile) coastline of Britain.

The project was launched in 2001 when the government offered funds from HM Treasury's Invest to Save Budget to underpin the ICZMap project, set up jointly by Ordnance Survey, the UK Hydrographic Office and the British Geological Survey. The aim was to create the first-ever unified digital base mapping combining onshore and offshore features and assess the benefits of developing such integrated mapping for the whole country.

The three partners were joined in a project steering group by other professionals and academics along with bodies such as the Environment Agency, port operator ABP(Mer), local authorities represented by the Isle of Wight Council, and Defra (the government's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

They concluded that integrated coastal management is now more important than ever as the coastal zone faces growing pressure from rising sea levels, climate change, erosion, pollution and the impact of both commercial and leisure activities, ranging from offshore wind farms to the development of new marinas.

ICZMap could potentially help thousands of coastal users, including harbourmasters, engineers, boat users and those responsible for environmental management, coastal conservation or new developments.

More than 500 organisations, companies and authorities have expressed interest in the potential benefits of ICZMap. Local authority policy makers, who have traditionally had no overall template to help them monitor and plan developments which affect both land and sea, particularly welcome the initiative. Authorities that are responsible for implementing new European Union legislation covering the management of coastal zones say such tasks would be easier and more cost-effective to carry out using ICZMap. A survey carried out during the study showed that 85% of possible users said unified data would be helpful to them and supported its use in shoreline management plans.

Maps and charts along the coast of Britain are created at different scales and projections and held in different formats by one or more of the three bodies, and in the three trial areas a buffer stretching 20km offshore and 5km inland was adopted for integrating existing data.

"Our work has demonstrated that not only is it possible to integrate the data, but that there are significant benefits in doing so," says Professor Mike Cowling, chairman of the ICZMap Steering Group. "It offers the potential for substantial cost savings for users of coastal zone data and opportunities for wider data sharing and the promotion of joined-up geography."

He adds: "Everyone who has been involved in the project now recognises the value and importance of extending ICZMap out from the trial areas to encircle the entire coastline of Britain. But if we are to progress this quickly and effectively we shall need significant additional funding to bring the coastal datasets of Ordnance Survey, the UK Hydrographic Office and the British Geological Survey to a common standard and to retain such standards. We shall therefore be presenting our report to the UK government so they can assess the potential benefits and consider funding issues."

The 44-page report from the two-year study shows that there is agreement that the latest and most detailed Ordnance Survey digital mapping – OS MasterMap – should be foundation data for the coastline in ICZMap, with UKHO and BGS data adjusted to align with it. To enable this to happen on a wider scale, Ordnance Survey will need to create a continuous Mean High Water (MHW) line in its detailed digital data – at present the data is broken by representations of features like piers, groynes, bridges and harbour walls. It was also agreed that the delineation of Mean High Water (MHW) and Mean Low Water (MLW) around the coast would be the one based on Ordnance Survey data.

A common vertical referencing system covering land heights and sea depths was also created for cartographic purposes and has been based on the fixed Ordnance Datum Newlyn (ODN), with UKHO Chart Datum (CD) – recorded at 340 places around the coast in the trial areas – related to it. However, further technical and mathematical work is needed to implement common vertical referencing further off shore; the necessary work on this will be led by UKHO with input from other information providers.

Other outstanding issues include the need for further discussion on the lack of near-shore data – the mapping of the sea floor between MLW and 10 metre depth. Along some parts of the coastline such areas can extend several kilometres out to sea. The study says it is important to discover how important this new information might be to users and who should be responsible for funding and collecting the data as well as keeping it up to date.

It is not intended to make experimental linked data from the trial areas available as a free-standing ICZMap product. Rather, the aim is to ensure that in future the different datasets covering the British coastline become fully consistent so that users can mix and match data easily and conveniently within computerised geographical information systems (GIS). However, the ICZMap team is keen to share the knowledge gained during the trials with those who would benefit from its work to date and its full report can be viewed online at www.iczmap.com

Commenting on the initiative, Nick Holden of the Environment Agency says: "ICZMap has the potential to significantly contribute to our Agency being able to deliver more effective environmental management. For us, key areas that would benefit include work on water quality, biodiversity, conservation, fisheries, flood defences and shoreline management. ICZMap would, for example, have been of real benefit to us in the aftermath of the oil spill by the tanker Sea Empress in Milford Haven – we had to gather information from many sources to analyse the problem and how it was dealt with."

And James Kavanagh, Assistant Director of the Geomatics Faculty of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) comments: "Using the ICZ Map, local government can better manage the coastal region, so they will be able to more accurately assess where to place flood defences, ensuring that they provide the maximum protection for the flood affected areas, while at the same time having the least impact on other developments down the coast."

ICZMap website and report

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