Coastal Portal

The Coastal Portal aims to provide user-friendly access to information and data products on user functions and monitoring activities in the Belgian part of the North Sea and the coastal zone, including beaches, dunes and polders. Portal themes are organised around 3 categories: human activities (including flood protection activities), marine life, and environment (with a specific section on climate). The portal offers the possibility to display both static and interactive data products and maps via thematic inputs in the form of clear GIS layers with the possibility to link to the underlying metadata. In this way, the Coastal Portal tries to function as a central referral portal to the multitude of information sources. The portal will be systematically updated and expanded, both with relevant information products and in terms of functionalities, and will try to respond as much as possible to the needs of the professional user.

The integrated nature of this portal contributes to the European commitment to a sustainable integrated maritime policy and coastal zone management. Furthermore, the Coastal Portal provides a close connection with the Compendium for Coast and Sea, which aims at combining disperse information and data from Flemish and Belgian marine and maritime research.

This portal offers:

• Interactive map products in a viewer
• Static map products in PDF format
• Downloadable metadata
• Useful web links tailored to each theme
• Information about sea, beach, dunes and polders