EP051-10
Next-generation tool for digitizing wave runup
Monday, 14 December 2020: 10:27
Virtual
Margaret Palmsten, USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center St. Petersburg, St Petersburg, FL, United States, Justin J Birchler, U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, Saint Petersburg, FL, United States, Jenna A Brown, Monterey Bay Association, Monterey, CA, United States, Shawn R Harrison, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, MS, United States, Christopher R Sherwood, Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States and Li H Erikson, USGS, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
Abstract:
Wave runup, the height of discrete water-level maxima at the shoreline due to waves, is an important component to the total water level at the shoreline in addition to tide and storm surge. Energy from wave runup provides forcing for beach and dune erosion. The US Geological Survey (USGS) in collaboration the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces real-time, six-day Total Water Level And Coastal Change (TWL&CC) Forecasts (
https://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/research/twlviewer/) over 4,700 km of sandy coastline around the United States.
In order to validate the wave runup component of TWL&CC Forecasts, we require observations of wave runup during storms, which are most simply obtained though video imagery at the shoreline. In this work, we begin with an existing open source tool for digitizing wave runup in video imagery (https://github.com/Coastal-Imaging-Research-Network/runupTool-Toolbox). The existing tool uses time-dependent filters and edge detection algorithms combined with manual digitization to identify the runup edge. We augment the existing tool by training a Support Vector Machine with a database of digitized wave runup. We will discuss the improvement in digitization and reduction in human effort utilizing this approach. Increasing automation can improve the delivery time of TWL&CC products and validation as well as provide more data for model improvement.
