GEOSS Support for Decision-Making in the Coastal Zone: Managing and Mitigating the Impacts of Human Activities and Natural Hazards in the Coastal Zone

A series of (regional) GEO Workshops organized by the GEO Coastal Zone Community of Practice and the IGOS Coastal Theme in partnership with GOOS and GTOS

First Regional Workshop

Observing System Requirements for Managing and Mitigating the Impacts of Human Activities and Coastal Inundation in the Mediterranean Region

Goal and Objectives: Under the auspices of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), and with a primary focus on the needs of developing nations, the GEO Coastal Zone Community of Practice (CZCP) proposes a series of regional workshops that will provide an end-to-end forum for data providers and users to identify observing system requirements (from observations to modeling) and decision-making tools needed to manage and mitigate the impacts of coastal inundation, storm surge and human activities on coastal communities and ecosystems. As a step toward achieving these goals, the proposed series of workshops will aim to:

  • Foster communications between land-oriented and sea-oriented communities of scientists, environmental managers, policy makers and other users. Historically, observation efforts within the marine aquatic and terrestrial spheres have been largely separate. A major goal of the CZCoP is to aid in establishing an integration of these efforts.

  • Build on and extend previous efforts and specify data and information requirements of the Integrated Coastal Area Management (ICAM) community in developing nations, particularly longer-term planners, policy makers, researchers and educators. ICAM user interests represent a spectrum of scales from local to global with information needs from near-real time to multi-decadal and secular.

  • Discuss and prioritize data and information gaps identified in a separate efforts leading up to the workshops. Identify the challenges to filling these gaps, as well as the emerging decision-making approaches and model-based solutions.

  • Facilitate linkage of space-based observations, and land and ocean in situ measurements and models with studies focusing on the impacts of human activities, coastal development and urbanization on susceptibility to coastal inundation, and human and ecosystem health.

  • Initiate planning for a COastal Data Assimilation System pilot project (CODAS) and corresponding Integrated Coastal Decision Support System (ICoDSS) for data acquisition, analysis, modeling and integration toward improved decision-making across the land-sea interface in two or more target regions. A key goal of this planning process will be to strengthen the institutional capacities of developing countries and to promote international joint observation and research, through improved surface-based monitoring and increased use of satellite data, dissemination of technical and scientific knowledge. Specifically, the workshop will examine the state of coastal predictive models and decision-support systems and identify what steps will be needed to satisfactorily address user needs in developing nations. To this end, the CZCP proposes utilizing contrasting developed/developing nation sites to host the pilot projects.