Conclusion
we shall solve the technical problems”. In practice, we only saw experimental 3-D being built in to these packages in the past decade, and
temporal GIS being built in during the past three or four years. They
are still not ubiquitous and they need to be properly integrated with GIS,
so we still have quite a way to go to get these tools to work properly.
Until they do, no GIS packages at present can be used for process
modelling by themselves. You have to create separate models to analyse
coastal processes, and then use the GIS to show the results.
Impact of policy issues
There are a number of important GI policy-related issues in Europe
that we need to be aware of, such as legal issues, access to data, the Freedom of Information Act, and so on. The importance of policy is often
greatly underestimated. Certainly at the European level, especially
within the 15 member states of the EU, if one good policy goes into
place you can open up a whole new set of industries: for example, nobody
five years ago thought we would see the national telephone monopolies
ofEurope broken but they are, and we can see all around us the results
of this change in policy.
The European Commission is the executive body of Europe, and can
issue directives that then have far-reaching down-stream impact.
However, we are still lacking adequate European policies relating to
GI. In live years of trying, five years of full-time lobbying effort, we
have still not got a single person above the level of Director - and that
is quite a low level within the Commission - to even accept that GI is
important. Not GIS, not coastal zone GI, but even the basic concept of
geographical information. So we are now embarking on another threeyear effort to see if we can convince them that it is an important issue.
We are going to be looking for some support from the user-community
on this: for example asking you to lobby local associations, to get in
touch with politicians, to find out who your Member of European Parliament is in Brussels and make representations to these people, because
one well-placed policy change could have a huge impact on geographic
information use, and possibly coastal information use, over the next
decade.
François Cuq
Remote sensing
For a few years now, the pace of research in the area of remote sensing
has slowed to a virtual halt, during which users have had time to become
familiar with the existing technology. Thanks to various American,
European and Japanese projects, we now have a clearer view of the
world, seen through the sensors of a new generation of satellites. These
are currently undertaking very high-resolution surveys of the world,
using a number of spectral bands we had no access to in earlier years,
especially with the arrival of multi-beam radar satellites. It is now time
315
we shall solve the technical problems”. In practice, we only saw experimental 3-D being built in to these packages in the past decade, and
temporal GIS being built in during the past three or four years. They
are still not ubiquitous and they need to be properly integrated with GIS,
so we still have quite a way to go to get these tools to work properly.
Until they do, no GIS packages at present can be used for process
modelling by themselves. You have to create separate models to analyse
coastal processes, and then use the GIS to show the results.
Impact of policy issues
There are a number of important GI policy-related issues in Europe
that we need to be aware of, such as legal issues, access to data, the Freedom of Information Act, and so on. The importance of policy is often
greatly underestimated. Certainly at the European level, especially
within the 15 member states of the EU, if one good policy goes into
place you can open up a whole new set of industries: for example, nobody
five years ago thought we would see the national telephone monopolies
ofEurope broken but they are, and we can see all around us the results
of this change in policy.
The European Commission is the executive body of Europe, and can
issue directives that then have far-reaching down-stream impact.
However, we are still lacking adequate European policies relating to
GI. In live years of trying, five years of full-time lobbying effort, we
have still not got a single person above the level of Director - and that
is quite a low level within the Commission - to even accept that GI is
important. Not GIS, not coastal zone GI, but even the basic concept of
geographical information. So we are now embarking on another threeyear effort to see if we can convince them that it is an important issue.
We are going to be looking for some support from the user-community
on this: for example asking you to lobby local associations, to get in
touch with politicians, to find out who your Member of European Parliament is in Brussels and make representations to these people, because
one well-placed policy change could have a huge impact on geographic
information use, and possibly coastal information use, over the next
decade.
François Cuq
Remote sensing
For a few years now, the pace of research in the area of remote sensing
has slowed to a virtual halt, during which users have had time to become
familiar with the existing technology. Thanks to various American,
European and Japanese projects, we now have a clearer view of the
world, seen through the sensors of a new generation of satellites. These
are currently undertaking very high-resolution surveys of the world,
using a number of spectral bands we had no access to in earlier years,
especially with the arrival of multi-beam radar satellites. It is now time
315