Coastal and Marine Management – Navigating islands of data

Abstract

The disciplines of Coastal Management and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) are predominantly focussed on creating a regulatory and legislative framework within which national and regional planning policies, climate mitigation measures and environmental monitoring requirements can be effectively implemented. These evidence-based processes necessitate the discoverability, accessibility and integration of appropriate ‘trusted’ coastal and marine data together with contiguous terrestrial datasets. This presents significant challenges at national and local levels. While authoritative open data is often available, the data for any management requirement is often dispersed across a wide range of national online portals, statistical and research hubs, ‘scientific’ platforms and occasionally, private companies. This is exemplified in Ireland, where MSP is in its infancy, and consequently, the breadth of MSP foundational thematic marine data requirements required to comply with this Directive has yet to be fully realised by end-users/stakeholders and data providers. This study examines the nexus between mandatory data requirements of the European Community’s Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive11INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC) is a legal EU initiative to establish an INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe and to make geographical information more accessible and interoperable for the management of the environment and other wide range of purposes towards supporting sustainable development (EC, 2021) (2007/2/EC), (EC, 2007) and the evidence-base needs of its Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive (2014/89/EU). An extensive inventory of coastal and MSP thematic data features is identified and categorised (into sectoral/thematic clusters) and appropriate and authoritative online sources (where available) are scoped out. Through an in-depth interrogation of national and EU sectoral platforms or portals, (much of whose data was originally captured for a diverse range of applications and management processes), and in view of INSPIRE’s well-established (legally-binding) data specifications, standards and guidance, a methodology is presented to accelerate coastal and marine data discovery, and to collate or ‘group’ these authoritative data sources under broad but succinct MSP thematic headings. The resulting coastal and marine data catalogue is the first step in the creation of an easy data reference and retrieval tool for Irish coastal and marine practitioners, and presents a model for other nations.