A coastal erosion model to predict shoreline changes

Coastal erosion is a natural phenomenon affecting a growing number of worldwide sites. The impact of the waves on coast is cause of debris removal and soil erosion. The effect depends on wave strength, action time, and wave direction. In literature, several models have been proposed to estimate the mean rate of sediments moved annually alongshore. In the manuscript, the authors propose a prediction model to estimate the evolution of shoreline due to coastal erosion. Three altimeters are used to measure the instantaneous sea surface elevation. Directional wave spectrum is computed in order to estimate the direction of wave propagation and its measurement uncertainty. The shoreline is discretised into a finite number of linear segments. Then, according to historical information on the shoreline transformation, the impact of the wave on the coast is evaluated. Subsequently, the model predicts the changes of each line segment estimating the future shoreline.