Exploring Stakeholder Views Regarding Spatial Information and Enabling Technology Use for ICZM: A Case Study from Victoria, Australia

Integrated approaches to coastal management (known as integrated coastal zone management-ICZM) have been adopted widely since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Decision-support for ICZM demands that policy align with practice such that stakeholders can access a range of time-series information across the entire catchment-coastal-marine continuum. Such access, implemented in spatial enabling technology (e. g., Geographic Information Systems-GIS), can enable stakeholders to make assessments of the dynamics of changing environmental, social, demographic, and economic circumstances with more detail than otherwise possible. However, the level of government at which there is failure to recognize the potential for up-grading decision-support in these terms dictates the extent to which innovation is adopted. In Victoria, Australia, ICZM stakeholders are not yet served by any form of dedicated spatial information-sharing framework, despite ICZM policy having been implemented in 1995, and since refined on a regular basis. In this article, we use semi-structured interviews to explore the outlook of Victorian coastal managers regarding the adoption of spatial information and enabling technology use in support of ICZM initiatives. Results indicate that the optimal integrated use of the technology among Victorian ICZM stakeholders is constrained by a lack of relevant policy implementation, and a lack of supporting stakeholder capacity-building programs. Illumination of these issues provides information that can be used to guide future research, policy development, and capacity-building regarding development of an effective spatial information-sharing and use framework for Victorian ICZM.