Kuststat

Kuststat is a web-based data portal that collects, stores, and disseminates statistics related to coastal regions. The project aims to standardize coastal data from multiple sources, enabling researchers, policymakers, and the public to access comparable indicators such as shoreline change, coastal population, economic activity in coastal zones, flood and erosion risk, and sea-level trends. The portal emphasizes open access, reproducible methods, and machine-readable data through APIs and downloadable formats.

Data are curated from national statistical offices, environmental agencies, satellite-derived products, and scientific projects. Metadata follow a standardized schema to describe data provenance, temporal and spatial resolution, units, and methods. Kuststat provides data visualization tools, map-based interfaces, and programmatic access via an API. Users can search by region, time period, or indicator, and export data in CSV, JSON, or GeoJSON.

Governance and licensing emphasize transparency, with contributors required to provide methodological notes and version histories. Data quality is described through uncertainty estimates and metadata completeness indicators. Updates occur on a regular schedule, with archival versions retained for reproducibility.

Typical use cases include climate risk assessment for coastal communities, trend analyses of erosion or sea-level rise, and planning of infrastructure and protective measures. Limitations include uneven regional coverage, inconsistent measurement methodologies, and gaps in historical records.

See also: coastal data portals, open data, geographic information systems. External references are not included in this overview.