New web portal to keep coastal councils up with research
A new web portal has been developed by CSIRO that will enable coastal councils, and other coastal stakeholders, to find research easily at a national level, and then focus on regional and local research projects.
CSIRO committed to creating the Coastal Research Webportal at last year's Australian Coastal Councils Conference, when it was realised local councils had a low awareness of the range of coastal research available.
Dr Andy Steven, from CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship said that by creating a central webportal to access the latest research data, decision makers will be able to better evaluate proposals for their communities."
Dr Steven said the website will also allow scientists and decision makers to investigate possible collaborations, to promote scientific research, and to identify any research gaps.
The webportal has short, plain English, acronym-free research summaries and it provides further links to freely available data and research, under the Creative Commons license.
The webportal, which uses a Google Maps interface, was developed in cooperation with TERN – the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, which will now manage the website.
The webportal can be found at: http://coastalresearch.csiro.au/
This is an Australian Coastal Ecosystem Facility (ACEF) project under TERN, funded by ACEF and CSIRO. TERN is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Super Science Initiative.