A New Object-Oriented Data Model for Oceans, Coasts, Seas, and Lakes

2004 Association of American Geographers Centennial Meeting
Philadelphia

SPECIAL SESSION: GIS in Marine and Coastal Environments

D Wright

Dept of Geosciences, Oregon State Univ

Corvallis, OR 97331-5506

541-737-1229

M Blongewicz

Danish Hydraulic Institute

Horsholm DENMARK

P Halpin

Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke Univ

Durham, NC

J Breman

ESRI

Redlands, CA

S Grise

ESRI

Redlands, CA

ArcGIS Marine Data Model Review and Case Study Teams

Over the past few years ESRI, with a significant amount of user community input, has been engaged in the exercise of building "industry-specific" data models for ArcGIS. There are a number of efforts currently underway in most of the industries and scientific disciplines that ESRI serves (e.g., transportion, telecommunications, and energy utilities; forestry, surface hydrology, and conservation/biodiversity). A new marine data model has been developed for those who apply GIS to the coasts, estuaries, marginal seas, and/or the deep ocean: academic, government or military oceanographers, coastal resource managers and consultants, marine technologists, nautical archaeologists, marine conservationists, marine and coastal geographers, fisheries managers and scientists, ocean explorers/mariners, etc.

The conceptual framework and design of the model will be discussed, and how it seeks to take fuller advantage of the most advanced manipulation and analysis capabilities of ArcGIS, particularly its support of more complex rules that can be built into its geodatabases, and of objects with not only attributes, but behavior. A further goal is the support of existing data standards, so as to help simplify the integration of data at various jurisdictional levels. For users, the model provides a basic template for implementing GIS projects (e.g., inputting, formatting, geoprocessing, and sharing data); for developers , it provides a basic framework for writing program code and maintaining applications. The model also considers how marine and coastal data might be more effectively integrated in 3-D space and time, with "placeholders" meant to represent the fluidity of ocean data and processes.

Keywords: coastal/marine GIS, marine data model, geodatabase

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