Utility of collaborative GIS for maritime spatial planning : Design and evaluation of Baltic Explorer
Abstract
Due to rigid copyright rules the following is a short summary of the abstract, go to the open source: Maritime spatial planning (MSP) needs tools to facilitate discussions and manage spatial data in collaborative workshops that involve actors with different types of backgrounds and expertise. Never the less, spatial tools in real-world MSP is only sparsely used. In the article it is argued that more knowledge about use of GIS can support MSP is needed. It studies use of GIS as a tool for collaborative MSP in five steps around development and test of the prototype collaborative GIS, Baltic Explorer. The evaluation of the use found that the present functionalities of the system could support and facilitate the collaborative discussions in the MSP work. Still more research in use of spatial data in the MSP process is needed.