Journal of Coastal Research

SI 56

1233 - 1236

ICS2009 (Proceedings)

Portugal

ISSN 0749-0258

Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses the Case of

Finnish Marine Coast
R. Kalliola and L. Laurila
Dept. of geography
University of Turku, FI 20014, Turku
Finland
riskall@utu.fi

ABSTRACT
KALLIOLA, R. and LAURILA, L., 2009. Contributing coastal zone management by GIS analyses the case of
Finnish marine coast. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 56 (Proceedings of the 10th International Coastal
Symposium), 1233 1236. Lisbon, Portugal, ISSN 0749-0258.
Coastal zone management requires reliable and tangible spatial information as basis. The marine coast of most of
Finland is especially fragmented due to the curved shoreline and the presence of wide archipelago belts with tens
of thousands of islands of variable sizes. We present here how GIS analysis can be used to produce such spatial
data sets that have direct use value for the coastal stakeholders, planners and decision-makers. Tailored products
applying the existing data resources as basis enable the making of holistic regional models and also allow the
zooming in when details of individual shores should be seen. In this presentation we focus particularly on the
modelling of the neighbour influences of buildings (summer cottages) and other anthropogenic structures in the
coastal zone, as these are in the front of the shore development often inducing disagreements among the different
stakeholder groups in the coastal areas. We have developed a unique GIS based work chain to produce data on
shore occupation on a regular basis. This methodology helps the coastal managers to see what is happening over
the times at wide spatial extensions. We furthermore reinforce the potential of online map and other information
services in the internet, contributing the dissemination of coastal information for anyone interested.
ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: Coastal zone, shore development, Baltic Sea, map server

INTRODUCTION
Responsible coastal planning should apply information about the
physical environment and the diverse use practices and
development pressures in the local level. Integrated Coastal Zone
Management (ICZM) is an example of a process that should deal
with the physical environment and human activities in this
manner. In this process, reliable geographical data are
indispensable to assess the influence areas and impacts of the
diverse coastal activities.
In those coastal areas where the shoreline is particularly long
and curved it is challenging to determine precisely the degree and
locations of human activities in the coastal zone. Spatial analysis
should be applied to assess in these areas the spatial patterns of
shore occupation and development. In the department of
Geography of the University of Turku, we have been developing
such analyses for the conditions of the Finnish marine coast from
since the 1980s (Gran et al. 1999, Laurila and Kalliola 2008a).
Our earlier analyses of the land use patterns in the coastal zone
were mainly based on visual map surveys and subjective
interpretations. This work was laborious to practice and moreover,
not easy to replicate equally by another person. Repetitive surveys
are however needed for the monitoring of changes taking place in
the shore environment in a reliable manner. For this, spatial
modelling techniques have now been developed. Whilst the
technical details of these developments have already been reported
elsewhere (Laurila & Kalliola 2007), the present paper describes

their basic ideas and evaluates the utility of the GIS-based

approach to facilitate coastal management.
Spatial data and analysis methods have witnessed dramatic
improvements in both quantitative and qualitative terms during the
recent years. For this, also the societal expectations for
increasingly sophisticated data sets are ever increasing. Coastal
maps should be simultaneously far extending and detailed,
spatially accurate and thematically correct, and easily
comprehensible and available for anyone interested.
Our study area in the marine coats of Finland exemplifies a very
challenging type of region to address by spatial analysis. The
Finnish Baltic coast is physically diverse and from the human
perspective it is a highly beloved natural area for various types of
recreational purposes. When such a unique nature co-occurs with
conflicting development pressures, problems may arise. Until the
present the planning and management of this area has been piecewise rather than based on any comprehensive approach, being
administratively divided between many different coastal
municipalities.
Much of the Baltic Sea coast in Finland is actually made by an
archipelago that comprises of tens of thousands of islands with
their unique sizes and forms. In many areas the shore is highly
curved and detail-rich (Figure 1), and additionally the Finns have
built their houses and saunas wide across the coastal zone near the
seashore (Figure 2). For these reasons the challenge for analyzing
the status and environmental influences of the shore development
is immense.

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Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses

Figure 1. Example of some typical shores in the SW Finnish

coast. Grey areas are rocky shores and in the dark areas forests
growing on clay or till extend until the shore. Buildings are
scattered along the shoreline

Figure 2. Example of a building near the shore, and the typical

landscape of the inner parts of the Finnish archipelago coast

SHORE DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

We developed a GIS based procedure to model the distribution
of buildings and their environmental influences along the shores
of the Finnish marine coast. The datasets used in the process were:
o

Shoreline data (1:10 000) of the National Land Survey,

edited by the Finnish Environment Institute.

Data on buildings and residences. The spatial data

consists of the coordinates of the midpoints of the
buildings.

Topographic database of the National Land Survey.

This is used as complementary spatial data to locate for
example industrial areas, artificial shores as harbour
constructions, embankments and elderly summer
cottages missing from the other registers.

Nature resource areas and Natura 2000 areas. Data

from the Finnish Environment Institute and
Metshallitus.

The methodology rests on the use of buffer and overlay

operations in GIS (Figure 3). A buffer of 100 metres was used as
an approximation of the influence area of the buildings and some
other human constructions. The buffers made around every such
object were then overlaid with the shoreline and the proportion of
the shoreline lying inside the buffer zones was labelled as
developed, whilst those outside of it were considered as free.

Figure 3. Example of the use of buffers of 100 m radius for the

determination of developed seashore areas
The analyses were made for the entire Finnish coastline of
37.626 kilometres. Out of this length, one fifth is made by islands
that are smaller than one hectare in size, which indicates the very
detailed scale required in this analysis.
The accuracy of the thus produced shore development maps
was assessed by field surveys and by interviewing the
environmental authorities of the shore municipalities. The results
confirmed that the used buffer produced a robust but fairly
satisfactory approximation of the environmental influence areas of
the most typical shore constructions.

STATISTICS AND MAPS TO ASSIST COASTAL

PLANNING
The results were compiled into tabular and cartographic forms
separately for each of the coastal municipalities. Considering the
entire Finnish marine coast, 41% of the shoreline was
developed. This proportion however varies considerably
between the different municipalities (Figure 4). The most
occupied shores are in such areas that can be easily reached from
the main cities of the coastal zone. Some 84% of the shores in the
nature protection areas are free, i.e. beyond the immediate
influences of the major anthropogenic constructions.
These analyses reveal to the situation of the year of 2005. As
similar analyses have been done also earlier, it is tempting to
compare the most modern results with those of the past
inventories. In the majority of municipalities, plenty of new
summer cottages have been constructed and the proportion of free
shores has been dramatically decreasing. However, in some cases
also reverse development was detected but we interpret this
difference to rather reflect a methodological artefact than true
diminishing of the shore development.
This observation takes us to consider the importance of
calibrated and transparent methods in the inventory of shore
development. Only when the methods are rigid and replicable do
the results allow the creation of reliable change data from
subsequent years. To facilitate this for the future years, we have
archived all the critical datasets of the most recent inventory to the
data within the university.

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56, 2009

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Kalliola and Laurila

Figure 5. Shore development data implemented in the spatial data

portal Lounaispaikka in SW Finland. The background image is
an aerial photograph, which is overlain by the pale-looking lines
showing the distributions of the developed shores

Figure 4. Coropleth map showing the percentages of the

developed shores, i.e. those in the influence area of shore
buildings or other major anthropogenic constructions, in the
coastal municipalities of Finland

DISCUSSION
The benefits of using GIS in coastal planning are obvious for
many different perspectives. Among them is the analytical
approach that was exemplified by the present case study. Our
research revealed how a relatively simple analytical procedure,
when applied equally over a wide geographical area, produces
unique data for the coastal planners. In the later use of the
produced data further GIS operations could be easily incorporated
to link these results with other data sources that describe the
physical and cultural environs of the coastal region (see e.g.
Tolvanen & Suominen 2005, Ekebom & Erkkil 2003).
Another obvious benefit of use of GIS is in the possibility to
make the entire data analysis chain transparent and thus also
replicable. This notion takes the coastal GIS analyses further into
the arena of environmental information infrastructures about the
coastal environments (Laihonen et al, 2003, Tolvanen & Kalliola
2008). An example of the diversity of the potential uses of coastal
spatial data is the integration of our shore development data into
the SW Finnish spatial data portal Lounaispaikka (Figure 5).

The third obvious benefit of the GIS based coastal analysis is in

its ability to facilitate the dialogue between the different
stakeholder groups concerned about the coastal region. It is a
common fact that the coastal areas tend to be in the interest of
various types of actors, and that the opinions of the different
stakeholder groups may be conflicting. Although GIS data and
analyses do not solve any problems automatically their production
by reliable methods and their free availability through the internet
map servers is valuable. This way, participatory planning has a
strong and reliable ground to grow on, as all groups can access the
same information resources. Similarly to also other types of
natural areas (Kalliola et al. 2008), the dialogue between the
coastal stakeholder groups and the researcher community is more
fruitful when each party has access to the same basic data.

CONCLUSION
The study of coastal development along the Finnish marine
coast revealed the high potential of GIS analyses in coastal
inventories, management and planning. By making the data widely
available through the internet the dialogue between the different
coastal stakeholder groups can be reinforced by shared
information resources.

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GRAN, O.; ROTO, M. & LAURILA, L., 1995. Environment
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Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Harri Tolvanen, Tapio Suominen and other members
of the UTU coastal geography group for valuable collaboration
and discussions.

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