Building a new on-demand coastal data ecosystem

Climate change and coastal urban development will reshape the approximately 7,500km of Salish Sea coast. Managing this change, and our responses to it, requires great data and an informed discussion among the approximately 11.5 million people that call this region home. New technologies are opening the door to unprecedented data collection, analysis and communication tools that can change the way we manage our coastlines and make coastal science accessible to anyone. This presentation will discuss how images collected by UAVs can form part of a data ecosystem that opens the door to on-demand environmental data collection and analysis to support near real-time coastal mapping, modelling and monitoring. It will present newly developed tools for detailed monitoring of beach and foreshore change, a new visualization tool for engaging people with no technical background in discussions about complex coastal flood risks, and present examples of how these have been used within the region.