Shellharbour City Council is implementing a community beach monitoring program to help us closely map our changing coastline, and we need YOUR help.
When you visit chosen beaches in Shellharbour you can join thousands of others, from coastal communities nationally that are using this citizen science program, CoastSnap, to measure how our local beaches erode and recover over time due to changing ocean conditions.
Participating is easy! Take these 3 easy steps:
Your snap will be added to a community database of photos and used by Council for monitoring.
CoastSnap
CoastSnap is a citizen science platform for beach monitoring, which relies on crowd-sourced imagery to be collected and submitted by community members. It is a low-cost beach monitoring technology that turns personal smart phones into powerful coastal monitoring devices. At any given time of any given day, somebody somewhere is taking a photo with their phone of a beach and uploading it to the internet.
The aim of CoastSnap is to harness this incredible amount of information into something that can be used by Council, to understand how coastlines change through time – whether it be naturally, due to rising sea levels, extreme storms or coastal management activities. Ultimately, this information can be used to improve the way the Shellharbour coastline is managed into the future.
CoastSnap Station Locations
Head out to one of our CoastSnap locations:
Beach Stat
Along with the citizen science program, CoastSnap, we have installed BeachStat cameras at two locations along the coast – The breakwall at Shell Cove Harbour and Warilla Seawall.
BeachStat is an image-based beach monitoring system that has been developed by Water Research Laboratory (WRL) using low-cost cameras that are automated and self-contained. The system is ideal for collecting routine, high frequency timelapse imagery of beaches, and when combined with custom-developed suite of analysis tools, the imagery can be used for:
• Timelapse beach evolution videos;
• Mid-tide and inter-tidal shoreline mapping;
• Beach width analysis;
• Beach user analysis.
This project is supported by Shellharbour City Council with technical and financial assistance provided by the NSW Government through its Coastal Management Program.
Is BeachStat a surf camera?
While you could check the conditions of the surf, this installation is not meant for surf monitoring.
How do I use Coast Snap?
At the heart of CoastSnap is a simple stainless steel phone cradle that is installed overlooking a beach in a location that is easily accessible by the community. Using an instructional sign, a beach visitor is encouraged to place their phone into the cradle, take a photo, and share it to a centralised database via the free CoastSnap App or social media using a QR code and hashtag unique to each station. This collection of community sourced images provides a record of the coastline as it evolves. The technology behind CoastSnap is then capable of creating time-lapse videos of beach evolution, and tracking the precise changes in the position of the coastline over time.
How is the shoreline mapped and beach measured?
Images collected by both CoastSnap and BeachStat platforms can be analysed using advanced image processing techniques to estimate the shoreline position. The platforms provide a cohesive beach monitoring approach for Council.
The shoreline and beach width data from each will allow Council an understanding of short-term changes to the beaches from storms, as well as longer term changes that may occur as a result of beach recession from natural and anthropogenic influence.