The Delaware General Assembly enacted the Delaware Coastal Zone Act of 1971 to control the location, extent, and type of industrial development in Delaware's environmentally sensitive coastal zone. In 1998 a Memorandum of Understanding was ratified leading to formal regulation of the zone. Part of the MOU is to develop environmental indicators (EIs) for the zone. This paper describes the use of GIS and imaging software in the development of the EIs and the role of this software as a crucial part of certain EIs. The GIS will also be used for the spatial database management of the coastal zone EIs.