Surfcams meet Research - IDL PhD student project

The video monitoring technique has being proved as a valid methodology for analyzing hydro- and morpho-dynamics of the coastal zone since the early 90s. Despite the large exploitation of such technique, the use of online-streaming web-cam has been poorly investigated.

Coastal “surfcams” are IP cameras installed at the coast with the main aim of remotely providing visual information of sea state to surf users. A large amount of surfcams are streaming coastal images worldwide. Usually, the cameras are set up for mechanically rotating and zooming to show different areas of the coast. In Portugal, Surftotal network is composed by 19 surfcams streaming online images of 19 beaches over the Portuguese coast. The exploitation of surfcam network images would be an attractive solution for supporting coastal change monitoring and coastal management.

Surftotal company agreed to collaborate with the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon to investigate the possibility of taking advantages of its freely available online platform. The Surftotal camera will be set steady looking at Praia da Ribeira d’Ilhas during three days (28th March - 30th March)

The acquired images will be used to test the methodologies developed by Umberto Andriolo, IDL PhD student enrolled in the EARTHSYSTEMS PhD Program, to measure wave properties and to derive nearshore bathymetry