Currently, public sector coastal data is often difficult to discover and access and much of its value in informing coastal adaptation planning, management and community concerns is yet to be realised. Having access to these data and derived information products is essential for enhancing the information base that underpins coastal planning and management at the local, state and national levels.

Here we describe solutions that utilise recent innovations in the way relevant data can be more easily discovered, accessed and rapidly analysed to address key information needs. In particular, High Performance Computing resources and new internet search engine technology are transforming how we access and utilise data. For example, new search engines can now automatically identify key terms contained within documents and metadata, and take advantage of chains of hyperlinked relationships between those terms - the fundamental premise of Linked Data. Applying the Linked Data concept, it becomes possible to:

- Search and aggregate information (spatial, non-spatial) from a broad range of resources;

- Categorize and filter information based on content: for example by geography (e.g. state, coastal region, LGA area), landform (e.g. estuary, beach), policy focus (e.g. land-use planning, biodiversity), or a combination of the above;

- Identify linked items of interest (e.g. region and coastal erosion);

- Link to diverse data sources in a consistent manner without requiring uniform structure in the underlying data or documents, or storage in a single repository, through customisable, open-source web interfaces.