ABSTRACT
Geographical information technology may play a major role in conducting, structuring and controlling the respective coastal zone development and management operations within a wide-spread system. Systems analyses and systems technologies require interdisciplinary approaches in practice. Increasing awareness of the decline of nature resources renders it necessary to re-think the traditional approaches to nature resource management. This chapter presents the requirements for an integrated interdisciplinary approach to floodplain area development. It provides an example of an integrated approach to floodplain area development, which is currently undertaken by three departments of Hannover University, Germany. The chapter introduces the concept of a integrated geographical information system (GIS) for the coastal zone. A specific example project of an interdisciplinary integrated floodplain area development based on GIS methods was used to highlight some of the modelling, data finding and data integration problems as well as the interdisciplinary 'link function' of GIS in this realm of research and planning.
