The Guardamar del Segura City Council has put in place a sophisticated sensor system on its beaches to better understand and manage the movement of the shoreline. This is important because many places along the Valencian coast are losing sand and getting smaller.
The project, which received €82,728.20 from European funds under the Tourism Sustainability Destination Plan (PSTD), includes a number of technologies
that will keep an eye on how the sea behaves and how it affects the coastline in real time. The Institute of Coastal Ecology gave technical guidance for the project, and Oceannet, a company that specialises in this area, carried it out.
Data from the surf zone in real time
The system that is already in place has a current meter, a number of oceanographic buoys, and video monitoring equipment for the coast that are spread out along the Guardamar coastline. This sensor network lets you get high-resolution data right in the surf zone, where the waves move debris down the shore.
Getting “in situ” information at this important point is a big step forward from previous sources, as it doesn’t rely only on open sea data or computational propagation models to guess how waves would behave on the coast.
In real life, this equipment will help us better understand how sands migrate, which weather events have the most effects, and how beach profiles change following storms or changes in maritime dynamics.
A scientific basis for choosing choices
The City Council stresses that creating continuous data series will make it easier to create predictive models and decision support tools. These are important for planning regeneration or protection actions based on scientific evidence rather than merely theoretical estimates.
The City Council says that the beaches are very important for the ecology, culture, and economy, so they need to be studied using systematic observation methods to make sure they stay safe and strong against the erosion that happens in the Valencian Community.
With this project, Guardamar wants to create a strategic database that will help with integrated coastal management and improve communication amongst the coastal authorities that need to work together. The major purpose is to plan for erosion scenarios, make the best use of public resources, and lessen the effects of storms on one of the city’s most important natural and tourism attractions.
