Development of oceanographic information dissemination system; an application of web GIS

Abstract

It is an essential requirement to promote offshore fishing activities systematically to protect the coastal fishery resources, which are in optimal level of exploitation One of the alternatives available is to divert coastal fishing effort to offshore by providing information on offshore fishing grounds and favourable environmental parameters. Objective of this present study is to implement web GIS (Geographic Information System) as a supporting tool to transfer the satellite derived favourable environmental parameters for fish aggregations to the end user. In this study, satellite data were processed using remote sensing and GIS software and the web GIS application was developed using open source Map Server, PostgreSQL, PostGIS and Mapbender software. Four models were developed to process the raw data and processed data are uploaded weekly to the World Wide Web to enhance fishing activities. Potential fishing grounds, sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll (CHL), sea surface height (SSH), ocean currents, bathymetry, exclusive economic zone and fishery harbour locations are displayed in the web GIS interface. Viewing, zooming, panning, distance measuring, displaying coordinates and attributes and load WMS (Web Map Service) functions are enabled to provide a dynamic framework to the user.