New coastal website linking local research with local councils

By March 5th, 2012

The latest coastal research will now be at the fingertips of councils and developers, with today's launch of a new webportal at the Australian Coastal Councils Conference in Hobart.

The CSIRO-developed website will enable coastal councils, and other coastal stakeholders, to find research easily at a national level, and then focus on regional and local research projects.

CSIRO committed to creating the Coastal Research Webportal at last year’s Australian Coastal Councils Conference, when it was realised local councils had a low awareness of the range of coastal research available.

Dr Andy Steven, from CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship said, “By creating a central webportal to access the latest research data, decision makers will be able to better evaluate proposals for their communities.”

“By creating a central webportal to access the latest research data, decision makers will be able to better evaluate proposals for their communities.”

Dr Andy Steven, CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship

“The website will also allow scientists and decision makers to investigate possible collaborations, to promote scientific research, and to identify any research gaps,” Dr Steven said.

The webportal has short, plain English, acronym-free research summaries and it provides further links to freely available data and research, under the Creative Commons license.

Barry Sammels, the Chairman of the National Sea Change Taskforce said, “There is no doubt this webportal will be of enormous practical benefit for everyone who is involved in coastal planning and management.”

The webportal, which uses a Google Maps interface, was developed in cooperation with TERN – the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, which will now manage the website.

The webportal can be found at: http://coastalresearch.csiro.au/

This is an Australian Coastal Ecosystem Facility (ACEF) project under TERN, funded by ACEF and CSIRO. TERN is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Super Science Initiative.

The 2012 Australian Coastal Councils Conference is being held in Hobart 5-7 March at the Baha’i Centre of Learning, 1 Tasman Highway, Hobart.

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