The work is a collaboration between the University of New South Wales’s Water Research Laboratory and geospatial mapping specialists, Geoplex, who were engaged by the City of Gold Coast.
Actively managing the beaches against the increasing risks posed by storms, coastal erosion and climate change is a high priority for the City of Gold Coast and the wider community.
Geoplex NSW Business Manager Bill Martin said the project involved positioning 45 cameras along high-rise rooftops and life-guard towers to provide images of the coastline, combined with image-based mapping of spatial data.
“The overall platform is the most sophisticated and large-scale coastal monitoring system in the world, serving up geo-referenced imagery of the beaches and other spatial data sets that directly help stakeholders to manage the beaches,”
Geoplex NSW Business Manager Bill Martin
“The development of an interactive web dashboard allows users to see the latest imagery and to interact with data records on maps and plots.
“This data is automatically analysed, in combination with other environmental conditions such as waves and tides, to provide real-time metrics on beach health and climate risks.”
Matt Blacka, Principal Coastal Engineer at UNSW and Project Manager, said the project takes the beach monitoring systems that have been used for the past 20 years to the next level.
“When our team started this new project, we really wanted to stretch the envelope and ultimately develop a product that was much more useable for council,” Mr Blacka said.
“This system improves the visualisation of remote beaches, improves accessibility and enables better use of the imagery and data products.
“We’re now able to look at a much broader range of data including beach user numbers and locations, wave breaking characteristics, beach safety and overall beach health. It’s no longer just about beach erosion and accretion.”
Previous black spots in the system are now covered and all sandy-beach areas of the coast from the Tweed River Entrance to South Stradbroke Island can now be mapped.
The combined tourism and surfing industries are worth an estimated $7.5 billion annually to the Gold Coast’s economy, with this value underpinned by the city’s beaches.
UNSW’s Water Research Laboratory and Geoplex recently won the NSW Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Award (APSEA) in the Technical Excellence category for the project.