Coastlineswhere

Coastlineswhere is a proposed geospatial concept and data framework for describing coastline boundaries and related shoreline features across the globe. It envisions a unified, queryable record of where land meets sea, capturing variations in shorelines over time, including beach faces, cliff lines, tidal flats, and estuarine borders. The term is used in discussions of coastal informatics to illustrate how location-based shoreline data could be organized, accessed, and analyzed.

The data model of coastlineswhere combines vector representations of shoreline polylines with raster masks and rich metadata. Each shoreline feature is tagged with coordinates, feature type, measurement date, uncertainty, and source. The framework envisions aggregating data from satellite imagery, airborne lidar, tide gauge records, nautical charts, and field surveys, with historical shoreline positions enabling change detection and trend analysis.

Access to coastlineswhere is imagined through a geospatial API and GIS-compatible formats, enabling queries by place, time, or geographic extent. A user could request the shoreline position at a given date for a particular segment or retrieve rate-of-change estimates for a region. Versioning and uncertainty propagation would support robust scientific and planning workflows, while standardization would facilitate cross-border comparisons.

Applications proposed for coastlineswhere include coastal risk assessment, erosion and accretion monitoring, habitat and wetland mapping, and infrastructure and land-use planning in the context of climate adaptation. Challenges include data gaps, varying measurement standards, and the need for ongoing updates as shorelines shift with tides, storms, and sea-level rise. Realizing this concept would require collaboration, clear licensing, and sustainable funding.