iCoast: Did the coast change? This is the question that users of the new crowdsourcing application launched by USGS, will get the opportunity to answer. The obtained information will help scientists improve their predictive models and citizens to understand the coastal change procedure as well as realize their personal vulnerabilities against extreme storm events.
After extreme storms USGS, obtains aerial high-resolution oblique photographs, capturing a small area of the coast, and compares them to pictures before the storm to track the changes in the storm-affected coastal areas of the U.S. According to Sophia B. Liu, USGS Mendenhall Postdoc Fellow, "Computers cannot yet automatically identify damages and geomorphic changes to the coast from the oblique aerial photographs". Under the lack of personnel or capacity to examine the photographs obtained after every storm, this "citizen science project" is based on "human intelligence to finish the job".
Crowdsourced information will help scientists improve their predictive models of coastal change and erosion, triggered after storms and hurricanes. So far, these mathematical models were based on dune elevation and predicted wave action during storms. The addition of real data will allow scientists perform the much needed model validation, thus increasing the accuracy of their analytical predictions, before the occurrence of such extreme events.
The indisputable scientific and societal benefits from this project include the improvement of the accuracy of the analytical methodologies used in the evaluation of storm-induced coastal erosion, which is expected to increase vulnerability awareness of local authorities and residents in the storm susceptible regions.
To learn more about iCoast, and how to use it, please click here!
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