Open Source Geospatial Tools: Enabling Coastal Decision Makers

Author: Aaron Racicot, Ecotrust
July 22–26, 2007

Introduction

Great benefit can be gained by utilizing Open Source geospatial tools in coastal science. Spatially explicit issues in coastal environments are unique, yet can benefit from the technology commonly used in terrestrial environments. Many of the large trends in environmental spatial science are toward open application frameworks, open data access and open formats. [Jolma et al. 2006] Open Source software can provide a unique benefit in these areas for the coastal sciences. The coastal sciences are ripe to exploit two main benefits of Open Source spatial software:

Spatial and modeling technology of terrestrial science is often applicable and adaptable to crossing coastal boundaries.
Open Source technology holds promise of solidifying communities within the coastal science field through open development and open solutions.

These key benefits will be realized in coastal science when there are alternatives to traditional systems that not only build on good science but are developed in an open environment. As the influence of Open Source software becomes more prominent it is important to take a step back and evaluate the importance of these tools to decision makers and what work is still to be done to allow improved decision support using these tools in the future. In the ever changing software environment there exists a core set of Open Source spatially-enabled technology that has achieved critical mass. Its history, adoption, practical application and technological basis have enabled it to now be viable for prime time in the coastal sciences.

This paper focuses on Open Source geospatial technology that can be utilized to provide enhanced decision making capability to environmental managers. Specifically, we will focus on GRASS and QGIS in the desktop arena, Mapserver and OpenLayers in the web-based arena, and finally GDAL/OGR and PostGIS in the server arena. While the traditional software stacks owned by proprietary companies supporting the desktop and web-based solutions have been closed and disjointed, Open Source solutions show great promise of unifying tool sets and creating integrated solutions. As a culmination of this idea, we present a web-based software stack that is utilized to create the next generation of Decision Support Tools (DST), integrating both desktop and server technologies.

First, we describe an Open Source toolbox of desktop, web-based and server geospatial systems. The second section focuses on two examples of applying this technology to coastal science. The final section provides a forward-looking discussion of lessons learned and visions for future developments that will more tightly integrate the Open Source geospatial software stacks.

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