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Home > Geospatial Application Papers > Natural

Resource Management > Ocean

Overview | Mountain | Water Resources | Ocea | Coastal Zone

Management

Abstract

A Review of Some Software Tools for

Snthesiing, Understanding and

Presenting Oceanographic Processes: Is

there a Functional Oceanic GIS?

Saedur Rahman Chowdhur Associate ProfessorInstitute of Marine Sciences,BangladeshEmail: saedurrch@ahoo.com

M. Zakir Hossain

PhD FellowIntegrated Tropical Co astal Zone Manage mentAsian Institute of TechnologThailandEmail: hossainm@ahoo.com

Use of geoinformation data and toolsets has become a smart practice in

decision making for coastal and marine applications. Geographic

Information Systems provide support in many areas of marine and

coastal applications. These include, for example, applications in

coastline, bathymetry, benthic terrain, marine geology and geophysics,

geomorphodynamics, submerged aquatic vegetation, habitat mapping,ecology, coastal zone management, marine protected areas, marine

cadastre, animal tracking, oil spills, navigational charting, mapping of

oceanic variables and surface water classification; identification and

measurement of gyres, upwelling events, temperature, and chlorophyll

among numerous others. The momentum that GIS has picked up in

marine and coastal application fields is reflected by the evolution of the

Marine GIS domain and the emergence of a lot of appropriate tools

supplemented by enhancements in large and commercial GIS suites.

However, the inherent 3 dimensional nature of the ocean and its many

processes associated with the temporal dimension of these variables

make it complicated for a traditional GIS to store, analyze and visualize

them properly. Many marine data are inherently spatial in nature and isa strong candidate for being analyzed within geographic information

systems. Utilization of the satellite technology to synoptic

oceanographic observations, satellite communication with ocean

profiling buoys and profilers, use of GPS technology to locate and track

them creates a need to couple geoinformation technology to oceanic

research. Oceanographers, however, tend to use technical computing

tools such as MATLAB, GMT, IDL, R or tailor-made tools like Ocean

Data Viewer (ODV), Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) etc. for synthesizing

and visualizing oceanic data because of the apparent lacking of

appropriate tools in conventional GIS suites. Learning curves for many of

these oceanic tools are very steep and they are immensely disparate in

8/2/2019 A Review of Some Software Tools for Synthesizing, Understanding and Presenting Oceanographic Processes: Is ther

2/2

2/12 A Review of Some Software Tools for Synthesizing, Understanding and Presenting Oceanographic Pr

ww.gisdevelopment.net/application/nrm/ocean/ma06_21abs.htm

their capabilities, application areas, and maturity. Moreover, many

ocean features and processes are closely linked with atmospheric

phenomena which GISystems apparently have not paid adequate

attention to. Several technical computing software, special purpose

oceanic data processing tools, and frequently used commercial GIS and

image processing suites have been tested to synthesize, analyze and

visualize oceanic-climatic data of the Bay of Bengal derived from several

sources. These software tools and suites have been reviewed and

evaluated as potential Oceanic GIS components. Their integration

potentials were, however, seemed to be less promising and a need foran integrated oceanic GIS platform with relatively gentle learning curve

was felt urgent.

Keywords: Ocean Geoinformatics, Oceanographic processes,

oceanographic software, Oceanic GIS