Object‐oriented modeling of coastal environmental information

Abstract

This article examines how to model coastal environmental information within a geographic information system (GIS). The marine environment offers particular challenges to a GIS because of fuzziness, dynamics, and a full three dimensions. Object‐oriented systems provide a richer descriptive environment than the layered, map‐based approach, because they permit numerical modeling of entities and interrelationships. Such methods are useful to describe fuzziness, dimensionality, and temporal characteristics such as motion, cycles, fluid dynamics, and historical and predicted change.