Spatially Enabling Coastal Zone Management: Drivers, Design Elements, and Future Research Directions

This paper provides an insight to the drivers, design elements and issues associated with spatially enabling the management of coastal zones, in particular coastal property rights, restrictions and responsibilities. Coastal zones are encumbered by hundreds of property rights, restrictions, and responsibilities. These are created to manage coastal population increases, climate change, and to deliver good governance. Currently, the interests are managed disparately across and between governments: sustainability requires these interests to be managed in an integrated fashion. Spatial enablement can deliver information integration and minimizes the need for redesigning legal, institutional and administrative frameworks. This is recognized in international, regional, and national coastal forums. Emerging concepts including Marine Cadastres, Marine SDI, Seamless SDIs, and Property Objects will inform the solution, however, this paper suggests further research is required to fully understand the complete legal, administrative and technical arrangements in the coastal zone. Moreover, methods for streamlining the integration of property and non-property information are required, particularly the harmonization vertical datums. Finally, the feasibility of spatially enablement needs to be assessed.