Southwest Florida Environmental Sensitivity Index: Human-Use Resources

ESI data characterize the marine and coastal environments and wildlife by their sensitivity to spilled oil. This data set contains vector polygons for archaeological sites, lines for railways, and points for airports, beaches, and other facilities in Southwest Peninsular Florida. The data is part of a larger ESI collection for the region produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Mapping critical infrastructure for emergency response based on airport, heliport, and staging location points.
• Assessing cultural resource exposure based on archaeological site polygons.
• Modeling transportation network proximity to sensitive areas based on railway line data.
• Planning beach access and management based on beach point locations.
• Integrating human-use data with biological and shoreline habitat layers for comprehensive environmental sensitivity analysis.

Strengths

• Data is part of a standardized Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) framework for oil spill response.
• Includes multiple vector data types (polygons, lines, points) for different human-use resource categories.
• Produced by the authoritative National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the Southwest Peninsular Florida study area.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Likely collected and compiled for environmental sensitivity mapping and oil spill response planning.

Time Range

2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:22:55.377180; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southwest Peninsular Florida, USA