Storage, Analysis and Visualisation of Spatial Data: A Workflow to Support Marine Spatial Planning in Rockall

ATLAS work package 3 presentation at ATLAS 3rd General Assembly

Effective Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) relies heavily on the collation of spatial data from a wide range of sources. Here we present a suite of open-source, synergistic software that can be used in an efficient workflow to store, analyse and visualise spatial data.
For data storage we use PostgreSQL and PostGIS. PostgreSQL is a powerful object relational database system that has cross-platform support. It is extensible, with the PostGIS extension allowing it to store spatial data. For data visualisation and analysis we use R and QGIS. The R statistical programming language can be extended to be compatible with PostgreSQL / PostGIS. QGIS, a desktop GIS application, is similarly used in visualisation due to its intuitive interface and native support for PostgreSQL / PostGIS.
Using the Rockall case study as an example we demonstrate the use of these software and their interactions in a workflow that can be used to support MSP efforts.