Coupling GIS and remote sensing techniques for coastal zone disaster management: the case of Southern Mississippi

Background: Since hurricane Katrina, developer and planners are looking at a tools and sustainable ways to minimize vulnerabilities in events of disasters especially along the coast. In this setting, remote sensing and Geographic information systems (GIS) have the capacity to provide valuable and timely information about coastal resources, and form an important basis for sustainable planning for land management and decision making. This paper focuses on the design of appropriate coastal databases in six counties in Southern Mississippi using remote sensing and GIS technology. The intent is to enable planners and policy-makers contribute to improved land administration and coastal resources management in order to enhance their competence in decision-making. In order to achieve these objectives, satellite image and digital elevation models (DEMs) data were downloaded from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) seamless data warehouse National Elevation Dataset (NED). From there, the DEM data was co-registered to the satellite image to facilitate draping of the image over the DEM to create terrain models. Results: Result reveals greater part of the three counties along the coast lies less than 10 meters above mean sea level with exposure to coastal disaster vulnerability. Conclusions: In the context of the objectives of the research anchored on the applications of GIS and remote sensing towards efficient land administration and coastal resource management in six coastal counties in an ecologically fragile area already dubbed the epicenter of coastal disasters. Considering the changes that took place in the six counties after Hurricane Katrina debacle, the findings in this study not only stand out, but they remain highly beneficial to decision makers made up of planners and policy makers in several ways. Just as the study injected elements of novelty by identifying digital elevation model information for the six counties in low lying areas, revealing the steeper areas in the north portion of the study stands out as a major finding and study contribution in a way beneficial to decision makers in the region. With that they are now better informed in sharing and cautioning and pinpointing to the public the hidden critical pathways to coastal vulnerability that were previously unknown to ordinary people.