British Geological Survey’s new tool will help both coastal erosion and flooding management across both UK and international shores
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Each year, more than 28 per cent of England and Wales’ coastline experiences at least 10cm of erosion.
Now, a new tool developed by the British Geological Survey (BGS) will be used to predict how exactly coastlines change due to erosion and flooding – not just on UK shores, but worldwide.
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Known as CoastalME, the tool – created in partnership with the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton – simulates how coastal landforms interact with human interventions. Already in Spain, CoastalME has been utilised to assess flood and erosion risk across Andalusia’s entire 1,200km coastline, stretching across five of its eight provinces.
Within the UK, the tool has also been a fundamental part of the Resilient Coast Project funded by the government – a project where sediment’s release and transit is mapped to further research a sediment circular economy for East Anglia.
‘After years of developing CoastalME, we are pleased to see that it’s now been officially released and is now freely available to support coastal engineers and decision makers to better assess the risk of compound flooding and erosion more accurately than ever before,’ said Head of Coasts and Estuaries at the British Geological Survey Dr Andres Payo Garcia.
The damaging impacts of coastal erosion & flooding
By 2100 – thanks to both human activity and climate change – around half a billion pounds worth of residential property is expected to be lost in the UK due to coastal erosion, according to a survey from One Home.
Worldwide, its impacts are significant: in 30 years, erosion will have destroyed 36,000 kilometres of sandy coastlines. By 2100, scientists predict a further 95,000 kilometres – equivalent to 25.7 per cent of Earth’s beaches – will be entirely eroded.
Coastal flooding also impacts European coasts – by 2050, it is projected that 1-in-100 year coastal floods will hit regions in the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, and almost all remaining European costs by 2100.
