Wisconsin, USA
Simply stated, a coastal web atlas (CWA) is a means of organizing, presenting, and sharing spatial data for the coast. Once in place, a CWA can function as a coastal spatial data infrastructure and a platform for developing coastal management decision support tools. While Wisconsin has been actively applying geospatial technologies to coastal issues since 1994, development of a CWA is in its infancy. Wisconsin Sea Grant has learned much about key components of a CWA during the past decade through its role leading four coastal spatial data integration projects. Several technical and institutional issues surfaced as the projects moved from discovery, acquisition, and integration of spatial data from multiple sources to analyze regional coastal issues to the development of interoperable web mapping services and spatial data catalogs. These issues are associated with the following research topics: web portal design and evaluation, choosing appropriate web mapping technologies, GIS cartography, domain spatial data infrastructures, geospatial data archives, and spatial ontologies. Building the Wisconsin Coastal Atlas will provide insight on these important research topics.