What does the next generation of coastal environmental models look like?

Improving our ability to predict how coastlines will change is an essential part of quantifying risks from coastal erosion and flooding. Coastal Modelling Environment, or CoastalME, is a free tool created by BGS in partnership with the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton.

CoastalME is being used in the UK and internationally to provide improved predictive capability for coastal adaptation. Modellers can use CoastalME to simulate the interaction of coastal landforms and human interventions for open coast systems. This enables users to model and visualise coastal landscape changes more effectively using commonly available spatial data.

The operational tool is being used to inform decision making at regional, international and global levels and was named as a case study as part of the Government’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management research and development programme. At the regional level, the tool is being used as part of the Resilient Coast (RC) project, funded by the Government’s flood and coastal resilience innovation programme.

The RC project explores the concept of a sediment circular economy for coastal adaptation in East Anglia, in which the release and transit of sediment is mapped and value is assigned where benefits accrue. CoastalME is used to quantify the movement of sand, gravel and fine material along the coast and to determine its value as a nature-based resource. Early results suggest that allowing a 1 m landward recession of less than 10 m of the cliffs between Felixstowe and Caister would release around 1.8 million m³ of sand.

At an international level, CoastalME has been used in Spain to assess the risk of flooding and erosion for the whole of Andalusia’s coastline, which extends for 1200 km, measured at a scale of 1:25 000, and traverses five of eight provinces. This study represents the first attempt to map the spatial distribution of sediment thickness along this coastal zone by integrating various publicly available datasets. It demonstrated the flexible design of CoastalME by incorporating representations of geomorphological features such as ‘ramblas’ (a dry riverbed used as a road or thoroughfare) that are important sources of sediment during heavy rainfall events.

After years of developing CoastalME, we are pleased to see that it’s now been officially released and is freely available to support coastal engineers and decision makers to better assess the risk of compound flooding and erosion more accurately than ever before.

Dr Andres Payo Garcia, head of BGS Coasts and Estuaries.

Funding

This research was initially funded by the NERC iCOAST project as a proof of concept, NE/J005584/1 (2012 to 2016).

The workflow to create the sediment thickness model was developed between 2016 and 2022 thanks to funding from BLUEcoast, NE/N015649/1.

It is being operationalised (2022 to 2027) as part of the ongoing CHAMFER project NE/W004992/1 and is being extended to gravel-dominated coastal environments as part of the 2024 to 2028 UKGravelBarriers project, NE/Y503265/1.

Contact

For more information, please contact BGS press (bgspress@bgs.ac.uk) or call 07790 607 010.