Coastal Explorers: Engaging communities with the geomorphology of their coast

Project Description

Over 60% of the UK population live further than five kilometres from the coast, meaning that the coastline it is often inaccessible for many of the UK’s population. Access to blue-green spaces have been further restricted during Covid-19, yet the outdoors and blue-green spaces are known to be integral to health and wellbeing. The Holderness Coast is one of world’s fastest receding coastlines with an annual average erosion rate of two metres per year and is highly geomorphologically active. Coastal retreat has been recorded since Roman times; with a strip >3.5 miles wide and over 30 settlements estimated to have been lost to the North Sea in the last 2000 years. Stories and this heritage have been passed on through social history in the local communities – it is likely that the impact of geomorphological processes has not been more keenly felt by local populations anywhere else in the UK. Moreover, the rates of retreat are accelerating due to climate change, driving changes in wave climates, alongside sea level rise, placing these vulnerable communities on the edge.

To monitor coastal morphology and erosion and engage the public in coastal change, a total of 12 CoastSnap stations are being installed along the coastline https://www.coastsnap.com/ in a partnership between the University of Hull (UoH) and East Riding Council (ERYC). CoastSnap is a community facing citizen science project where the public are able to visit a station to photograph the coast from a fixed vantage post; photos are uploaded via social media (or an app) and interpreted using image processing algorithms to capture coastal dynamics and change. To enable the majority of the population who do not have daily access to the coastline, bring the restorative properties of nature into homes, as well as augment the CoastSnap visits with broader information on the geomorphology of our coasts, we propose recording 360° interactable and explorable videos at each of the CoastSnap locations. These videos will give stories of local geomorphological processes, linking this geomorphological understanding into heritage and coastal change into an immersive and initiative online experience. The 360-videos will be narrated by both geomorphological researchers and local community members, including the local East Riding Voluntary Action Service Youth Group.

To supplement the videos, we will also create high-resolution 3D-models of the coastal cliffs surrounding each CoastSnap station. These will be created utilising UAV SfM and build upon the funded 360-Lab, led by the UoH, which is generating interactive 3D models of flood risk installations. The models will be dynamically annotated and detail the geomorphology of the coasts. The models and videos will be available online alongside the 360-videos including ‘in the room’ using augmented reality and/or virtual reality enabled devices.