Multi-source coastal data analysis

This paper presents results from the second year of a project on coastal management and decision making sponsored by the National Science Foundation Digital Government Program and carried out by a multidisciplinary research team. As one of the primary goals of the project, tide-coordinated shoreline modeling and mapping requires the integration of multi-source spatio-temporal data that include high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) derived from IKONOS satellite images and aerial photographs, bathymetric data, water gauge data, satellite altimetric data, and water surfaces derived by a hydrodynamic hindcast model (Li et al., 2002b). Quality and accuracy assessment of these data has been made to ensure reliability of the outcomes of the data integration. The resulting shorelines derived from the integrated data are then evaluated for accuracy in comparison with traditional shorelines determined from tide-coordinated aerial surveys.