Opportunity Cameras for Coastal Monitoring

Domain #2

Disaster resilience

Challenge 2.1. Optimisation of prediction of disaster

Prototype

Open Call #2 laureate

Description of the project

Erosion and Storm surges related to extreme conditions and sea level rise, are the main identified coastal risks. Despite the need for more data and knowledge about those risks, it remains extremely difficult to get systematic data collection at the coast before, during and after an extreme event. Existing beachcams can be very useful in this respect. Meteo/climate forecasters already use existing beachcams to get a visual check of the sea state at the coast on one specific beach.

The aim of this project is to go further, and first, to gather the visual information all along the year from a set of a dozen existing cameras from Viewsurf and Beachcam networks, along the western european coast. Then, the expertise on coastal video monitoring of Waves’n See will be used to extract key coastal parameters from coastline or sea state to overtopping. These parameters enable to have better understanding of a beach response to successive meteo-oceanographic events, and are therefore useful to optimize the decisions and actions of beach managers. Additionnally, they constitute relevant validation or input data to ocean modellers.

Mapping of the pre-selected sites

Mid-term project update

The NOCCRO project addresses several technical challenges to implement the first European network of coastal webcams. So far, French and Portuguese manage to gather video flux from different beach and surf cams all along the European Atlantic coast. A special care has been taken in the sites selection in order to obtain a wild range of beach types in terms of sediments, coastal morphology, waves characteristics, etc. The main challenge was to ensure a robust data acquisition system while maintaining a good quality of views and images. We are now testing the capacity of our IT infrastructure to scale at network level.

Final project update

The aim of the NOCCRO project is to use the hundreds of existing beach cameras to help preserve the coastline.

Beachcam and Viewsurf, partners in this project, operates a network of more than 150 tourist or surf cameras along the European coastline. Waves’n See has expertise in image processing and analysis to produce oceanographic data crucial for managing coastal erosion and marine submersion.

The technical challenges involved acquiring, stabilizing and processing images from non-scientific cameras so that oceanographic analysis algorithms could be used. The second key point was to georeference all the camera views so that each pixel corresponds to a GPS point. Finally, each camera selected as part of the project will have been able to acquire at high frequency at least one of these parameters: height, period, wave direction, coastline, beach slope. The final result of the project: an initial network of 12 beach cameras used as coastal scientific cameras, stretching from the north of France to the south of Portugal, and the drafting of technical specifications to enable the experiment to be replicated on a large scale.

Examples of selected locations and camera viewing

Praia da Rocha Panorâmica, Portugal

Matosinhos Porto, Portugal

Ericeira, Portugal

Senhora da Rocha e paria Nova, Portugal

Green lines : optimum view desired
Orange lines : optimum view obtained

Project consortium

Waves'n See
Waves'n See
🇫🇷
France
Viewsurf
Viewsurf
🇫🇷
France
MEO BEACHCAM
MEO BEACHCAM
🇵🇹
Portugal

MORE INFO

Project presentation – SecurIT Awards application video