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INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT VISUALIZATION TOOL

FOR CORAL REEF ENVIRONMENT

During the past few decades, the level of development and size of the
population has increased dramatically. However the level of understanding of our
coral reef environment and other key resources for management criteria has not
increased much. Currently, there is little data related to coral reef environments.
In many cases, the data used to make decisions regarding the placement of coastal
developments and the protection of endangered species and habitats is outdated or
inaccurate. Further, available data and information need to be pooled in a manner
to understand the changes that occur in the habitats to take appropriate
management initiatives. Which are very difficult and involve considerable time
and man power.

Identification of the natural and human factors that cause problems is


the first step towards management of coastal resources. A thorough understanding
of the structure and functioning of the environment is necessary to identify the
problems and the factors that cause problems. Accurate scientific data and
information should be collected about the listed factors that cause adverse
changes. Analysis of these data and information forms the vital input for
management action plans and their implementation.

The data and information collected about the processes that govern the
health of the coral reef habitat are vital for management. Since the collected data
and information (tables, maps) could not be visualized in a comprehensible
manner for the end users such as policy makers, stake holders, etc., with multiple
scenarios, a computerized system of presentation equipped with minimum
analytical tools and enhanced visualisation possibilities is the need of the hour. To
cater this need, an Integrated Environmental Impact Visualization Tool for Coral
Reef Environment has been developed using the Arc objects and Map objects of
Arc GIS in Visual Basic Environment.

Various GIS software are available to map and monitor the coastal
resources, but the results from GIS software will not entirely satisfy all the
research requirements such as, “’dynamic updating”’ the maps or database
features, trends and dynamic chart analysis, etc. IEIVT-CoRE tool has been
developed to enhance the capabilities of existing GIS Software and to get the
desired outputs. The IEIVT-CoRE tool is developed using the Visual
Basic 6.0 software as front end, Microsoft Access Database as backend. Later the
programme was integrated with the Arc Object modules of Arc GIS software.

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