Coastwards

Many coastal cities on this planet will have to adapt to sea-level rise. Sea levels are projected to rise between 29 and 110 cm until the year 2100. Adapting to sea-level rise, however, costs money. And so decisions on which coasts to protect and how to do so are (ideally) based on calculations of risk. Integrated assessment models takes in huge amounts of data on coastal zones defined by hundreds of parameters to make these calculations.

One of these parameters is the coast material. Sandy beaches are more vulnerable to erosion than rocky cliffs. And erosion raises the risk.

Here, however, lies the problem. We don’t have sufficient information on the coast material of coasts worldwide. The only global dataset on coast material to be found was created in the year 1958. (And it was stolen from the library by the professor to be quickly scanned and then returned. True story.)

“Global assessments of vulnerability to climate-change induced sea-level rise and of its associated impacts are impeded by the severe lack of information on coastal physical characteristics.” Prof. A. Vafeidis

So, this is where the App comes in. And you. Help us create this global database by uploading pictures of coasts. It's as easy as going strolling along the coast, taking a couple of pictures and uploading them to the internet. Most of us do that anyway :)

Many thanks in advance.

The Coastal Risk and Sea-level Research Group from the University of Kiel, Germany