John Trinder

By Qingxiang Liu and John C. Trinder

The measurement and monitoring of shoreline changes are of great interest to coastal managers and engineers. Shoreline change information can be crucial for the assessment of coastal disasters, design of coastal infrastructure and protection of coastal environment. This chapter presents shoreline change monitoring based on multispectral satellite imagery and sub-pixel technique. Firstly, a brief introduction of shoreline definitions and indicators is given. Sub-pixel techniques for shoreline mapping on multispectral satellite images are then introduced. Following that, a brief review of existing research studies of long-term shoreline change monitoring based on multispectral imagery is given. Subsequently, a case study of sub-pixel shoreline change monitoring at the northern Gold Coast on the east coast of Australia is presented. By comparing the longshore averaged beach widths at seven representative transects from Landsat with those from Argus imaging data, the RMSEs range from 9.1 to 12.3 m and the correlations are all no less than 0.7. Annual means and variabilities of beach widths were estimated without significant differences from the reference data for most of the results. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for future work are given.

Part of the book: Advanced Remote Sensing Technology for Synthetic Aperture Radar Applications, Tsunami Disasters, and Infrastructure

By Sara Shirowzhan, John Trinder and Paul Osmond

Monitoring sustainability of urban form as a 3D phenomenon over time is crucial in the era of smart cities for better planning of the future, and for such a monitoring system, appropriate tools, metrics, methodologies and time series 3D data are required. While accurate time series 3D data are becoming available, a lack of 3D sustainable urban form (3D SUF) metrics, appropriate methodologies and technical problems of processing time series 3D data has resulted in few studies on the assessment of 3D SUF over time. In this chapter, we review volumetric building metrics currently under development and demonstrate the technical problems associated with their validation based on time series airborne lidar data. We propose new metrics for application in spatial and temporal 3D SUF assessment. We also suggest a new approach in processing time series airborne lidar to detect three-dimensional changes of urban form. Using this approach and the developed metrics, we detected a decreased volume of vegetation and new areas prepared for the construction of taller buildings. These 3D changes and the proposed metrics can be used to numerically measure and compare urban areas in terms of trends against or in favor of sustainability goals for caring for the environment.

Part of the book: Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design