The coastal zone is the interface through which land-ocean exchanges in the Arctic are mediated and it is the region of most high-latitude human activities. The coastal margin hosts a complex interaction of marine, terrestrial and atmospheric processes that are extremely vulnerable to predicted environmental changes and anthropogenic stressors. These coasts are typically permafrost-dominated and suffer from rapid erosion with serious implications for ecosystems and communities.Arctic Coastal Dynamics (ACD) is a multi-disciplinary, multi-national program of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and a regional project of IGBP-LOICZ (International Geosphere-Biosphere Program Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone). The overall objective of ACD is to improve our understanding of circum-Arctic coastal dynamics as a function of environmental forcing, coastal geology and permafrost and morphodynamic behavior. A major focus has been on the development of a circum-Arctic coastal classification in GIS (Geographical Information System) format to visualize and analyze the current status of the Arctic coastal region and its sensitivity to environmental changes.The entire circum-Arctic coastline has been segmented into homogenous elements and each element has been classified according to a coastal classification template, which includes information on morphology, composition and erosion rate. Numerous local expert groups of the ACD project were involved in the segmentation and classification procedure. Subsets of available data for various parameters, summarized under the term environmental forcing, such as winds, waves, currents, sea-level, water and air temperatures, sea ice, etc., have been extracted and formatted for inclusion in the circum-Arctic GIS.Based on the ACD project and the ICARP II Arctic Coastal Working Group, an expression of interest for an Arctic Circum-Polar Coastal Observatory Network (ACCO-Net) has been submitted for the International Polar Year (IPY). ACCO-Net has been selected as lead project for the IPY cluster Coasts and Margins Arctic and the full proposal has been officially endorsed by the IPY Joint Committee. The ACD GIS presented in this poster will provide an excellent base for circum-Arctic coastal monitoring suggested by the ICARP II Arctic Coastal Working Group and to be implemented within the IPY project ACCO-Net.