Building the Digital Coast:
The Action Plan for the Future
Phase One
The Digital Coast was envisioned as a data delivery system that could efficiently serve not only data, but also the training, tools, and examples users would need to turn data into useful information. In this way, the Digital Coast is designed to play a pivotal role in ensuring the wise use and management of coastal resources.
Phase one focused on serving the data and information available from the Digital Coast originators, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Services Center. Phase one was released on June 30, 2008.
The primary users of the Digital Coast are those individuals and organizations that manage the nation’s coastal resources. While building phase one, NOAA worked with many of the targeted user groups to get their input into the development of this decision-support system. Five of these groups soon became Digital Coast partners, not only shaping the development of the system, but also finding ways to incorporate their data and information into the process.
An equally important part of this process is the partnerships that arose between these groups as the system was built. Organizations that had rarely worked together in the past were looking for and finding ways to match up their goals and combine resources.
Phase Two and Three
Phase Two: late fall 2008
Phase Three: March 2009
The founding Digital Coast partners are represented by the
- NOAA Coastal Services Center
- Association of State Floodplain Managers
- Coastal States Organization
- National Association of Counties
- National States Geographic Information Council
- The Nature Conservancy
Phase two and phase three of the Digital Coast will be released as user feedback and partner data and information are incorporated into the system. Additional partners are also being sought.
