Australia’s coastline is one of the country’s greatest natural, economic and culturally significant assets. Beach-front infrastructure and coastal environments being of immeasurable value to our society. Around the country, impacts of climate change increasingly threaten the sustainability of coastal development and natural resources, through hazards such as coastal erosion and inundation.
The Australian Coastline Imaging Network, AusCIN, is a multi-year program under the CoastRI initiative, to establish permanent coastline monitoring infrastructure at priority reference sites around Australia.
As the lead facilitator of AusCIN, UNSW Sydney is working with partners around the country to establish reference coastline monitoring sites using fixed cameras, LiDAR stations and the citizen science initiative CoastSnap.
AusCIN, alongside the National Coastal Drone Program (NCDP) implemented by Deakin University, together form the CoastRI National Coastal Observatory Facility. Funding for AusCIN and the NCDP is underpinned by AuScope, and supported by other co-financing contributions.
The AusCIN program will:
- Establish coastline monitoring stations at a diverse and representative set of reference sites around the Australian coastline.
- Facilitate the collection of high-quality baseline coastal data sets that enable us to better understand, predict, and address the opportunities and risks facing Australia’s coastal communities and the environment.
- Demonstrate the value of strengthened, integrated and accessible long-term coastal data collection programs, at national scale.
- Provide a platform for engagement with communities and other coastal stakeholders, to bridge the science-to-action of coastal management.
The Challenge
- Over 50% of Australians live within 7 km of the coast in addition to billions of dollars of infrastructure and vulnerable ecosystems.
- Our coastal climate and environments are changing at unprecedented rates.
- To increase preparedness, sustainable use, and improve decision-making, a broad range of end-users need improved data to understand the implications of change to coastal areas.
Nevertheless, Australia currently lacks a nationally cohesive approach to monitor, understand, predict, and adapt to changes in the coastal zone.
The Response
A consortium of 13 National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) capabilities is developing the Coastal Research Infrastructure (CoastRI) initiative - a national-scale effort to address the current and future needs of Australian researchers, industry, and government.
CoastRI is designed around three interconnected themes:
- Observing coastal processes
- Cross-sector modelling and prediction
- Data identification, integration, and management
Vision
Research infrastructure connecting land and sea.
Objective
To gather comprehensive and integrated scientific data from diverse sources, enabling us to better understand, predict, and address the opportunities and imminent risks facing Australia’s coast for all peoples.
AusCIN is a key activity under the CoastRI initiative that will enable real time observation of a range of coastal settings, and collection of baseline data sets needed to adapt our coastlines to the changing climate. AusCIN and CoastRI more broadly, aim to deliver transformative change in how research infrastructure is operated and connected across coastal systems, providing a step-change for integrated national-scale coastal and climate capabilities currently unavailable in Australia.
