Access to a wealth of information on the marine and coastal environment
is now available online in a new digital atlas, officially launched
today (25 July 2006) by Professor Gerard T. Wrixon, President, UCC. The
Marine Irish Digital Atlas (MIDA), which has taken over four years to
develop, has been produced and is maintained by UCC's Coastal and
Marine Resources Centre (CMRC). The atlas provides an insight
into topics of general interest such as information on water-based
tourism, natural coastal features, special habitats and a range of
species, including seals, whales and dolphins.
For students or coastal practitioners with more specific information
requirements, the interactive atlas hosts over 115 maps, displaying the
locations of features such as ship wrecks, marinas, ports and
conservation areas. According to project manager Liz O'Dea,
thanks to data agreements with over 30 data providers, some data can
also be downloaded directly.
The MIDA initiative, originally funded by the Higher Education
Authority (HEA), has helped UCC's CMRC to build capacity in marine
geomatics by attracting researchers from across Europe and the United
States to work on the project. The MIDA engine (i.e. the
technology upon which it functions) is based on state of the art open
source software, which has been customised by GIS (Geographic
Information Systems) and computer science specialists working within
the Centre. This effort was complimented by contributions from
researchers in UCC and other institutions with expert knowledge of the
coastal and marine environment, leading to an interdisciplinary
approach to the implementation of the project.
The launch of MIDA places Ireland in the unique position of being one
of a limited number of countries with access to an integrated marine
data and information resource at the national level. Other
national or state level atlases are available in Australia, Belgium and
the state of Oregon. As a result, the MIDA launch has been
organised to coincide with a transatlantic workshop, hosted in UCC this
week, involving marine scientists from the US, Belgium, the UK, Canada
and Ireland as well as the European Environment Agency. These
scientists aim to identify the future challenges for managing coastal
data and information, including the next generation of supporting GIS
technologies. They will also work to produce guidelines for other
countries with an interest in developing their own coastal atlases.
Another unique feature of MIDA is the all island nature of the
resource. North-South collaboration between UCC and the University of
Ulster in Coleraine has ensured that matching datasets could be
acquired for the coastline of Northern Ireland, thanks to the vision
and support of Joe Breen, Environment and Heritage Service, Northern
Ireland.
Valerie Cummins, MIDA co-ordinator and CMRC manager, said: "The
teamwork involved in getting MIDA to this stage represents a huge
effort from the researchers and the many Leonardo da Vinci interns who
assisted over the last few years. MIDA has been identified as a
strategic flagship project for the CMRC, and as such, it will continue
to be maintained and enhanced to ensure the long-term sustainability of
the resource for the people of Ireland. It is envisaged that
future development will focus on the addition of more data layers, and
on producing new tools for specific users such as secondary schools and
marine eco-tourism operators."
The Atlas can be accessed online at http://mida.ucc.ie
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