Geographic Information Systems as a Vehicle for Achieving Collaboration among Levels of Government and the Public

Abstract

In the past, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has focused on managing sand at coastal projects on a project-by-project basis. This approach to sand management may not adequately consider the impact of individual projects on adjacent coasts. To address this issue, the USACE has initiated efforts to assess the benefits of managing sediment resources on a regional scale rather than on a projectby-project basis, thus the creation of the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program. Products of the RSM demonstration program include a Regional Sediment Management Plan consisting of a calibrated sediment budget, a gauged numerical regional prediction system, and a regional data management structure. All of these elements are created and maintained with the assistance of a geographic information system (GIS). The RSM demonstration region extends approximately 600-kilometers from the St. Marks River, Florida (eastern boundary), to the Pearl River, MS (western boundary), Figure 1. To aid in the management of such a large region, the domain was divided into eleven sub-regions based on geography or geology and/or sediment transport patterns.