The International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) is a newly-founded informal group of organizations who have been meeting over the past two years to scope and implement data interoperability approaches to coastal web atlases (CWAs). The mission/strategic aim of ICAN is to share experiences and to find common solutions to CWA development (e.g., user and developer guides, handbooks and articles on best practices, information on standards and web services, expertise and technical support directories, education, outreach, and funding opportunities, etc.), while ensuring maximum relevance and added value for the end users. Workshop 4 in Trieste will further the strategic planning, governance, global reference, and community-building work of ICAN. We will also continue work on our atlas interoperability proof-of-concept, which uses ontologies, as well as Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, namely Catalogue Services for the Web (CSW), with registered Web Map Services (WMS).