Development of a coastal monitoring technique using MATLAB based video image processing

Master of Science in Computational Science 2013-2015 EXT T.K Manoj Kumar L Sheela Nair ( Scientist E ) " National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), Thiruvananthapuram "

Monitoring and study of the coastal processes are extremely important for the coastal engineers, oceanographers and policy makers which helps in better decision making and thereby helps in the effective coastal management. Commonly adopted methods for coastal monitoring like deployment of instruments in nearshore region, beach profile measurements taken at regular intervals, analysis of satellite imageries, aerial photography etc. have limitations as they involve huge investment and may not be always available during extreme weather conditions. In this context the application of remote sensing system based on video camera offers ample scope for coastal monitoring. In this study, an efficient and effective tool has been developed using MATLAB software for coastal monitoring based on video imagery. The advantage of establishing this type of system is the availability of year round data at comparatively low cost. Even during extreme events like storm, data collection is possible. The data derived from the analysis of video imageries using the newly developed tool can give vital information regarding the coastal processes which includes the nearshore dynamics, beach processing (change in beach width, wave run up on beach and wave swash), etc. For the validation of video derived data the field measurement taken during the video recording period has been used and it is found that the computation based on video image processing technique corroborates well with the field observation.