Monitoring Coastal Sediment Movement using Edge Computing

Abstract

Coastal environments are subject to ongoing change. There is a demand for these changes to be tracked by both local and global authorities. Tracking the scale and rate of changes to these coastal environments is done through the practice of Coastal Monitoring. There are many existing and widely adopted methodologies, each with their own unique advantages, however their often expensive and labour intensive nature has called for research into low-cost, accessible alternatives.
This thesis describes the development of an edge-based approach to Coastal Monitoring as a means of low-cost, long-term observation of a coastal environment. Discussions are presented on all of the core aspects considered as part of the development process, including hardware and software. The thesis explores a range of segmentation algorithms for extracting sediment height data from a coastal scene, and discusses the challenges of developing a system on restrictive hardware for uncontrolled environments.

The research aims to assist the Wales Coastal Monitoring Centre (WCMC) in their assessments of the Welsh coastline, and provide them with an easy-to-deploy system at an affordable price. The device was deployed within a real-world coastal environment as part of an initial trial, and results show the extraction of sediment height is possible to varying degrees of accuracy and is dependent on environmental factors. Results are presented, and conclusions are drawn discussing the relationship between algorithm complexity and longevity of the deployment.

Date of Award	2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Aberystwyth University
Supervisor	Fred Labrosse (Supervisor)