ABSTRACT
In response to the need for increasing levels of information addressing state and sustainability of the marine environment to support local, regional and national policy the concept of Marine Stewardship has in recent years started to take on an important new meaning and dimension (Graff 2006). Although Marine Stewardship has a country by country interpretation there is common emphasis on importance of the spatial data domain and a growing recognition that governance, interoperability and information services are key underpinning features. At the European scale the development of a new digitally based geospatial information philosophy is being supported under the European Commission INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Directive which in turn is part of a global effort to build commonality across national “Spatial Data Infrastructures” or SDI’s (Labonte et al 1998, ESDP 1999). The GMES programme addresses the provision of end user information services through integration of measurement, modelling and prediction within a geospatial systems environment. Many of these emerging services are marine policy driven providing information to support coastal zone governance relating to fisheries, quality of waters, extraction of gravels, protection of marine species and flood protection. In view of the emerging requirement to extend land environment mapping into coastal waters (Land-Marine Workshop 2007) and provide access to these data, efforts to define and develop the protocol and standards for a marine specific SDI are underway (Ng’ang‘a 2004, Sutherland 2005, Sutherland & Nicholas 2006). The International
(IHO) has acknowledged a marine spatial data infra-workshop on Marine SDI Geomatica 2007, to discuss related issues. The first of five resolutions agreed at the IHO Workshop states;
“IHB to communicate with IOC to cooperate on the development of the spatial data standard S-100, with a view to facilitate marine/hydrographic data exchange”.
