Integrated planning of water and land-use

The role of water in spatial planning has received increasing attention in recent years. It was, for example, one of the leading motives in the preparation of the latest National Spatial Planning Note for The Netherlands. For the preparation of such spatial plans, and to support the associated policy analysis, there is a need to fully identify and characterize the interactions between the water sector and spatial planning and establish the process for making consistent joint projections for the water sector and land-use. This should account for spatial claims from the water sector, balance those claims with claims from other sectors, and feed back spatial constraints and opportunities. Land-use markets and government policies (translated e.g. in spatial reservations) form an important input in this balance. Modeling is indispensable to keep track of spatial characteristics and trace changes. Most of the available modeling considers a layered structure with a layer for national/regional projections and a GIS based layer to keep track of land use changes. Basically such model makes a distribution (rule based) of the national projections into the GIS based spatial raster, followed by an impact assessment based on the changes in the raster. Those models are generally weak in representing the processes driving land use changes such as the housing and labor market and – the water sector. The challenge remains to set up a suitable module covering these spatial - and water sector development processes. Based on the experience of the authors with many water studies and the recent development of a space-transport modeling tool (integration of transport and land-use), a sketch will be made of the requirements for such module. The scope for such planning tool will be illustrated (with data for The Netherlands), addressing key aspects such as competition for space, costs, risk, and environmental impact.

A new global database for assessing the vulnerability of coastal zones to sea-level rise

A new global coastal database has been developed within the context of the DINAS-COAST project. The database covers the world's coasts, excluding Antarctica, and includes information on more than 80 physical, ecological, and socioeconomic parameters of the coastal zone. The database provides the base data for the Dynamic Interactive Vulnerability Assessment modelling tool that the DINAS-COAST project has produced. In order to comply with the requirements of the modelling tool, it is based on a data model in which all information is referenced to more than 12,000 linear coastal segments of variable length. For efficiency of data storage, six other geographic features (administrative units, countries, rivers, tidal basins or estuaries, world heritage sites, and climate grid cells) are used to reference some data, but all are linked to the linear segment structure. This fundamental linear data structure is unique for a global database and represents an efficient solution to the problem of representing and storing coastal data. The database has been specifically designed to support impact and vulnerability analysis to sea-level rise at a range of scales up to global. Due to the structure, consistency, user-friendliness, and wealth of information in the database, it has potential wider application to analysis and modelling of the world's coasts, especially at regional to global scales

More public education and more intubationists will prevent prehospital deaths

A new global coastal database has been developed within the context of the DINAS-COAST project. The database covers the world's coasts, excluding Antarctica, and includes information on more than 80 physical, ecological, and socioeconomic parameters of the coastal zone. The database provides the base data for the Dynamic Interactive Vulnerability Assessment modelling tool that the DINAS-COAST project has produced. In order to comply with the requirements of the modelling tool, it is based on a data model in which all information is referenced to more than 12,000 linear coastal segments of variable length. For efficiency of data storage, six other geographic features (administrative units, countries, rivers, tidal basins or estuaries, world heritage sites, and climate grid cells) are used to reference some data, but all are linked to the linear segment structure. This fundamental linear data structure is unique for a global database and represents an efficient solution to the problem of representing and storing coastal data. The database has been specifically designed to support impact and vulnerability analysis to sea-level rise at a range of scales up to global. Due to the structure, consistency, user-friendliness, and wealth of information in the database, it has potential wider application to analysis and modelling of the world's coasts, especially at regional to global scale