Data consolidation for coastal management: the development of the Guyana coastal database platform

Abstract

Coastal management globally requires reliable, high quality and up to date data available to all coastal stakeholders. Coastal databases have provided a platform to consolidate large volumes of data and make it accessible to the wider society. The literature has demonstrated a gap exists between developing and developed countries in terms of coastal data consolidation and the development of coastal databases as a management tool. This study presents a cost-effective coastal data consolidation platform developed for the developing country of Guyana. The data was sourced from several open access sources, national repositories and online databases. All the data acquired was consolidated into a web platform designed on the Wix website editor. The outcome of this study shows the potential of developing a cost-effective coastal data consolidation platform that can be implemented in the coastal management framework of developing countries to improve the decision-making and environmental governance of their coastlines.