8/2/2019 A Review of Some Software Tools for Synthesizing, Understanding and Presenting Oceanographic Processes: Is ther
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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: [email protected]
M. Zakir Hossain
PhD FellowIntegrated Tropical Co astal Zone Manage mentAsian Institute of TechnologThailandEmail: [email protected]
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
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