At Esri UK Annual Conference 2014 In April 2014 the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) made history by publishing the first ever adopted marine plans for England. Alex Coomer, GIS Manager at the MMO, explains how the organisation used ArcGIS Online to create an interactive tool called the Marine Information System (MIS). The MIS presents a combination of over-arching and spatially specific marine plan policies for the East inshore and offshore, including the publication of over 110 spatial datasets via a series of online interactive maps. Alex talks about the process undertaken to develop MIS and the challenges faced.

1. Publishing marine plans with the Marine
Information System (MIS)
Alex Coomer, GIS Manager
11th June 2014

2. The Marine Management Organisation - a brief history
• Established in April 2010
• An executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) established and
given powers under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009
• Our mission: enabling sustainable growth in our marine area and to
promote the UK government’s vision for clean, healthy, safe, productive
and biologically diverse oceans and seas
• What we do (for England):
– Marine planning
– Marine licensing
– Marine nature conservation
– Fisheries management
– Enforcement

3. Today’s presentation
• Focus on marine planning
• Requirement to publish the first ever marine plan for England via
the Marine Information System (MIS)
• The use of ArcGIS Online as a simple and effective
communication tool
• Future improvements to the Marine Information System

4. What is marine planning?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFn0buPVU6A

5. Just in case that didn’t work...
• Defra (2004) ‘Strategic, forward-looking planning for regulating,
managing and protecting the marine environment, including through
allocation of space, that addresses the multiple, cumulative, and
potentially conflicting uses of the sea.’
• The use of marine space and resources is increasing. A marine plan will
ensure the area is managed sustainably, considering social,
environmental and economic objectives.
• Benefits of marine planning:
– A strategic approach to managing our seas
– Guiding marine users to the most suitable locations for particular activities
– Greater certainty for developers
– Sustainable use of marine resources
– Proactive- allowing for future changes to activities and technologies

6. Marine Protected Areas
Defence & National Security
Renewable
energy
Carbon capture & Storage
Marine dredging & disposal
Fisheries
The marine plans will provide policy and guidance covering 14
different marine related sectors:

7. Marine plan areas
• 11 plan areas (10 plans)
• Marine planning is an iterative
process, moving around each of
the marine plan areas in turn.
• First marine plans focus on East
inshore and East offshore from
Flamborough Head to Felixstowe

8. Publishing the first ever marine plans
• Adopted 2nd April 2014
• Detailed 200 page document including
– 38 plan policies across 14 different sectors
– 28 static maps referencing over 110 different spatial data layers

9. How do we communicate this information to
stakeholders and the wider public?
• Need to publish a complex, static document in an intuitive and
interactive way
– publish via the internet
– for use by both specialists and the public
– adopt corporate MMO branding
• Highlight key policy considerations
• Provide access to spatial information at different scales (user
defined)
• Signpost to wide variety of data sources
• Solution needs to be flexible with content managed by the
organisation
• Zero capital funding and a potentially changeable deadline

10. Initial challenges
• Project had no budget allocation with limited staff resources
– no software programming experience
– basic web content management system
• Technical solution therefore needed to utilise either free/open
source solution or software already available to our organisation
• Over 110 spatial datasets to be published as interactive maps
– Data needed to be managed in-house.
– MMO have access to ArcGIS Server, but network security prevented the
external publication of GIS services such as WMS , WFS or REST
• Tight deadline, approximately 3 months before the launch date

11. Identification of the solution…
• MMO is a member of the Defra network and part of an Enterprise
Licence Agreement (ELA) with ESRI
– 3 year agreement
– access to a suite of ESRI software products and solutions
– access to a number of ESRI consultancy days
• ESRI ELA includes access to a Defra network ArcGIS Online
account with an allocation of credits.
– allows data to be stored in the AGOL cloud and published either as a GIS
service or via an interactive webmap
– webmaps can be embedded within any web page using simple HTML code,
no requirement to write any code yourself

12. Data was loaded into the AGOL cloud…

13. Create a webmap with the data, configure and share…

14. A note of caution for data managers…
• If your data is stored in the AGOL cloud, once your webmap is
published (i.e. made publically available), the content in the map is
also made publicly available and can be downloaded or
consumed by other applications.
• This can cause issues if you wish to use commercially licensed
data, or 3rd party data acquired under licence.
• Where necessary MMO sought permission from data owners to
ensure there was no breach of conditions.
• For a small number of datasets a WMS service from an existing
MMO tool was used which prevented data download, although
there is a loss in some functionality.

15. • This allowed us to
embed interactive maps
directly into the MMO’s
website.
• Maps can be positioned
and re-sized
accordingly.
• Allows for the display of
spatial data alongside
relevant policy text

16. www.marinemanagement.org.uk/marineplanning/mis/index.htm

18. Next step - enhance the user experience
• Embedded webmaps provide clear links between spatial data and
associated policy
• Users often want more flexibility, the ability to view and overlay
different marine plan policy layers together
• We needed a simple GIS application to provide access to over
110 spatial data layers
• ArcGIS Online was able to provide a solution

22. • The basic viewer application can be downloaded from the GIThub
website and configured locally.
• MMO used 2 ESRI consultancy days to help with the initial
configuration.
– Support to download code and set up the application
– Tweaks to the styling and branding of the application
– HTML, Java, CSS
– Put in place the foundations for MMO to continue to customise the application.
• Application is hosted on the MMO web server, sources a
published webmap from ArcGIS Online

23. Interactive map application...

24. The result = the Marine Information System (MIS)
http://www.marinemanagement.org.uk/marineplanning/mis/index.htm

25. What’s next for MIS?
• Continue to improve and enhance the tool
– Develop a policy check tool; potentially using the forthcoming Java Script API
builder
• Look at the possibility of hosting spatial data in-house
– Improved efficiencies relating to data management
– More control over the GIS services, including the ability to prevent data
download or access in other applications
• Potential links to other MMO systems, to assist in the
implementation of plan led marine management.
• Including consuming 3rd party data direct from their systems (e.g. from across
the Defra network, DECC or The Crown Estate

26. Thank you for your time.
alex.coomer@marinemanagement.org.uk
www.marinemanagement.org.uk
www.marinemanagement.org.uk/marineplanning/mis/index.htm