Nearshore Bathymetry derived from Video Imagery

Abstract

Owing to the economic importance of seasonal fluctuations in beach width and the frequent implementation of local beach and shoreface nourishments, coastal managers and scientists increasingly demand coastal state information at smaller spatiotemporal scales. Advanced, automated video techniques provide the means to collect such high-resolution monitoring data. Successful use of video imagery for coastal monitoring requires the quantification of relevant morphological parameters from remotely sensed information. This thesis presents two complementary methods to quantify intertidal and subtidal beach bathymetry from time-averaged video observations. Application of the new methods to a nourished beach at Egmond (The Netherlands) has confirmed their utility in support of coastal management, revealing unexpected morphodynamic behaviour that would have been hard to measure with traditional survey techniques. Stefan Aarninkhof conducted his PhD. research at the Department of Civil Engineering and Geosciences of Delft University of Technology, in close collaboration with Delft Hydraulics.