A GIS for Managing Past Knowledge in Coastal Defence Planning

The chapter describes the work for a coastal defence monitoring program that has been promoted by Regional Authority in Northern Italy (Emilia Romagna). With the aim to organize knowledge on coastal defenses (i.e., presence, state and management) and make analyses comparable with coastal evolution of both emerged and submerged beach, a geodatabase has been implemented; this last has further been improved with the collaboration of technicians that are involved on coastal defense management. The final aim of the work was to supply administration with a powerful and innovative tool for assessing the efficacy of coastal defenses in time. The work also proposes a way to solicit attention on data effectiveness (by way of metadata) and on positional accuracy for coastline evolution assessment.