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Virtual Coast Guard: An Open and Crowdsourced GIS Portal for Stewardship of I ndia's Coast
Author(s) -
Gajbe Alpesh,
Shankar Adya,
Rodriguez Sudarshan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
transactions in gis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9671
pISSN - 1361-1682
DOI - 10.1111/tgis.12066
Subject(s) - coast guard , stewardship (theology) , livelihood , government (linguistics) , crowdsourcing , open source , geography , guard (computer science) , open source software , environmental resource management , environmental planning , business , political science , computer science , environmental protection , world wide web , software , environmental science , linguistics , philosophy , programming language , archaeology , politics , law , agriculture
I ndia's coastline is under tremendous pressure. The current processes of development are becoming a threat to the ecology and livelihoods housed on the coast. If left unchecked, there will not be much of a coast left for our future generations. GIS provides tremendous opportunities to map spatial information for better decision‐making. Government agencies generate maps, but they are localized and inaccessible, preventing an actual assessment of the damage that is already happening to our coast. The Coastal Area Mapping Project ( CAMP ) envisions creating a collaborative GIS platform using open source technologies. CAMP's vision is to use Free and Open Source Software ( FOSS ) for collaboration and cocreation and collective problem solving. CAMP foresees a vision for I ndia's coastline where power is equalized among all constituencies (Government, corporations, media, communities, civil societies, etc.), by capturing the big picture and patterns, thus enabling the creation of strategies for stewardship of I ndia's coastline for human wellbeing, coastal protection and sustainable coastal development.