An Automated Method for Semantic Classification of Regions in Coastal Images

Large, long-term coastal imagery datasets are nowadays a low-cost source of information for various coastal research disciplines. However, the applicability of many existing algorithms for coastal image analysis is limited for these large datasets due to a lack of automation and robustness. Therefore manual quality control and site- and time...

Benefits of the use of natural user interfaces in water simulations

The use of natural user interfaces instead of conventional ones has become a reality with the emergence of 3D motion sensing technologies. However, some problems are still unsolved (for example, no haptic or tactile feedback); so this technology requires careful evaluation before the users can benefit from it. We argue, that the best benefits...

Monitoring of beach surface properties with remote sensing

Existing aeolian transport formulae tend to overestimate the sediment transport volumes in coastal environments. Supply limiting factors like moisture content, shell patches, sediment sorting, vegetation and morphological features are believed to explain these overestimations. These supply limitations act on a variety of spatio-temporal scales...

Confidence in Coastal Forecasts

This thesis answers the question "How can we show and improve our confidence in coastal forecasts?", by providing four examples of common coastal forecasts. The first example shows how to improve the estimate of the one in ten thousand year storm-surge level. The three dimensional reconstruction, based on paintings, shows that structural erosion...

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Impact assessment of extreme storm events using a Bayesian network

This paper describes an investigation on the usefulness of Bayesian Networks in the safety assessment of dune coasts. A network has been created that predicts the erosion volume based on hydraulic boundary conditions and a number of cross-shore profile indicators. Field measurement data along a large part of the Dutch coast has been used to...

Using 18th century storm-surge data from the Dutch Coast to improve the confidence in flood-risk estimates

For the design of cost-effective coastal defence a precise estimate is needed of the 1/10 000 per year storm surge. A more precise estimate requires more observations. Therefore, the three greatest storm surges that hit the northern part of the Holland Coast in the 18th century are reconstructed. The reconstructions are based on paintings,...

Functional coverages

A new Application Programming Interface (API) is presented which simplifies working with geospatial coverages as well as many other data structures of a multi-dimensional nature. The main idea extends the Common Data Model (CDM) developed at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The proposed function object model uses the...

OpenEarth - Inter-Company Management of: Data, Models, Tools & Knowledge

Research, consultancy as well as construction projects commonly spend a significant part of their budget to set-up some basic infrastructure for data and knowledge management, most of which dissipates again once the project is finished. Standing initiatives so far have not been successful in providing a proper data and knowledge management...

Toe rock stability for rubble mound breakwaters

Present design tools, as found in the Rock Manual or Coastal Engineering Manual, for the determination of toe rock size for rubble mound breakwaters are based on test data with a large spread: data is relatively dispersed around the centre and descriptive equations have limited applicability ranges. New research has been undertaken to contribute...

Coastal defence for Centro Habana: Integral coastal defence for section 4 of the Malecón and hurricane generated hydraulic boundary conditions

Master project report. Havana is protected from the sea’s severity by a seawall which is called the Malecón. The study area of this report is section 4 of the Malecón which more or less matches the coast of the district ‘Centro Habana’. Since the construction of the Malecón the hinterland has frequently been flooded due to storms and hurricanes...