Sharif Digital Repository

Free Trade Zones (FTZs) around the world offer special advantages to investors and facilitate import/export of goods in order to boost the regional economy. Integrated coastal management in these areas faces special challenges in addition to what ordinary ICZMs usually encounter. For a successful ICZM plan, the very strong business orientation in FTZs has to be taken into account, while other important aspects such as environmental, social, and cultural issues should not be overlooked. The problem becomes more difficult where the free zone is situated in sensitive and valuable environmental circumstances.Kish Island, a free trade zone in the Persian Gulf region, has recently been the focus... 

Iran, having two separate coastlines at its north and south of about 3000 km length, with very different characteristics, suffers from various coastal problems. While its northern coastal area is over-populated and its sensitive and unique habitats must be protected from destruction, most of its southern coastal areas are undeveloped and deserted. Intense oil and gas exploitation activities in the Caspian Sea region and occurrence of two wars in the Persian Gulf during the last two decades have rendered hydrocarbon pollution a major issue for this country's marine and coastal environment. Biodiversity is under threat in some areas and natural resources are deteriorating. To overcome the... 

The human impact on the coastal ecosystems is a global environmental concern. Due to the growing urbanization, industrialization, and transportation, this impact on the living and non-living components of the coastal area is expected to further increase in the coming years. Artificial intelligence based automation of the coastal monitoring, including data collection, analysis and decision making, provides real-time insights and opportunities for large-scale coastal management and governance. In this paper, a framework for autonomous litter surveying and human activity monitoring for governance intelligence in coastal eco-cyber-physical systems (ecoCystem) is presented. A large dataset of...