LIFECO: GIS and Spatial Data analysis

This work package is part of the LIFECO programme:
LInking hydrographic Frontal activity with the ECOsystem
dynamics of the North Sea and Skagerrak - importance to Fish
stock recruitment

The success of GIS in the management and analysis of
land-based spatial data is well-established. While GIS
offers a potentially useful assemblage of tools and techniques
for summarising and investigating relationships amongst marine
data marine GIS implementations are still novel. Two issues that
contribute to this slow uptake by the oceanographic and marine
community are the 4-dimensional nature of marine data and lack
of appropriate analytical routines. These are the two problems
that will be addressed specifically by this work package.
Researchers working in a multidisciplinary team will share a
common platform and suite of tools that are easily accessible
and can handle a range of data types for exploratory analysis of
combined data sets. A geographic information system (GIS) is
proposed as the framework for data analysis and synthesis where
the data sets include sampled biological parameters, output from
numerical models, historical fields, and satellite imagery and
derived products.
To this end the GIS and spatial analysis work package aims to:
Provide access to a collection of processed satellite images
and derived parameters from a variety of sensors and
integrate image collection within the GIS environment

Develop routines for access, analysis and display of
multidisciplinary data; develop routines to explore 4D data
in a variety of modes; develop functionality to assist
interactive descriptive hypothesis generation, and model
validation against other data sets

Develop routines to help formalise descriptive hypotheses
through development of 2D statistical models.