Automated mapping of the intertidal beach bathymetry from video images

This paper presents a fully automated procedure to derive the intertidal beach bathymetry on a daily basis from video images of low-sloping beaches that are characterised by the intermittent emergence of intertidal bars. Bathymetry data are obtained by automated and repeated mapping of shorelines from video time exposure images for different (tidal) water levels (Aarninkhof, S.G.J., Turner, I.L., Dronkers, T.D.T., Caljouw, M., Nipius, L, 2003. A video-based technique for mapping intertidal beach bathymetry. Coastal Engineering 49, 275-289; Plant, N.G. and Holman, R.A., 1997. Intertidal beach profile estimation using video images. Marine Geology 140, 1-24.). The developed procedure handles intelligent selection of a shoreline search area and unsupervised quality control of the obtained bathymetry data. The automatically retrieved beach bathymetries compare very well to bathymetries derived from the original manual mapping procedure and to ground truth data points (DGPS). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.