Last Update April 20, 1996

Future uses or improvements of FACT might include:

Use of the FACT issue structure as the foundation for the development of a strategic plan for Florida’s coastal areas. Of particular appeal is the potential for using the issue structure as the first step in the conduct of a comparative risk assessment for the coast. Such a study would be the first conducted on a major coastal area in the nation and would provide Florida with extensive, quality documentation and analysis of its major coastal issues, creating a strong basis for the development of a strategic plan. The existence of FACT as a measurement system for such a plan would create a powerful, credible planning tool for Florida.

Use of FACT as a foundation for the development of a Florida State of the Coast Report. FACT is technical in nature and is intended to discuss individually and independently each of the indicators in the system. The natural extension of an indicator system is a summary report that attempts to integrate the independent information that is provided in a collection of individual indicators into a coherent discussion of the status and trends associated with the system-- a Florida State of the Coast Report.

Refinement and Expansion of FACT Of the unresolved indicators remaining in the framework, some will have no reasonable source of data from which a quality indicator can be developed. These indicators will remain available for future investigation and, hopefully, for successful resolution. There will be another group of potential indicators, however, that are fully attainable, but have not been included in the system because their collection and development require significant personnel or financial investment beyond what is reasonable given the objectives and resources of the first project.

A reasonable next step is to begin to develop these more expensive and methodologically complex indicators and include them in the system. This second group of indicators will require a variety of techniques to provide the necessary information. FCPM recommends use of the following:

• GIS technologies,
• detailed analyses of technical and demographic databases,
• survey techniques,
• baseline secondary data collection, and
• other specialized research approaches to document and collect the required information to support the remaining indicators.

Display of FACT in Electronic Format. FCPM is presently planning to display the FACT document in its entirety on the Internet in a Netscape format. Opportunities exist, however, to make FACT considerably more interactive on the Internet by tying it to other coastal information with hypertext, more specialized graphics, video, and photographs. Further, FACT and associated information could be made available in CD ROM format.

Use of FACT for Environmental Education. Environmental indicator development has been successfully used as a foundation for an extensive block of instruction in high school environmental science classes. FACT could be used as the foundation for the development of high school classroom curricula concerning coastal issues.