Beachcam idea under fire
By Richard Batson (Eastern Daily Press, 23 June 2005)
A Big Brother-style camera is set to watch Norfolk's storm-lashed crumbling coastline.
Scientists aim to set up a rock-the-clock camera at Sea Palling to see how well the man-made reefs protect the shoreline.
Information from the £1.2m project will help towards computer-modelling which helps draw up coastal management policies.
The scheme was last night denounced by coastal campaigner Malcolm Kerby as a waste of money which would be better spent on defences rather than "academics messing about with experiments."
But the local professor leading the study said it was a good investment to get firm information about defences which would help ensure money was not wasted in the future.
The camera monitoring follows up an earlier study which saw environmental boffins riding around the reefs on jet skis trying to check how sand was moved around by storms.
Field team project leader Professor Chris Vincent, head of the University of East Anglia's school of environmental studies, said the study was vital to understanding "what is happening and why" in areas which were at risk.
"Houses and even entire towns could be lost forever if measures are not taken now to ensure their survival," he added.
The reefs were built around 10 years ago at Sea Palling, one of the worst hit areas in the 1953 floods, when sea defences began to crumble in the mid 1990s - but have affected the flow of sediment further south resulting in artificial beach recharges in the Great Yarmouth area.
The scientists have been investigating the impact of the large breakwaters and wanted to measure how much sand was moved around by each storm and where the most vulnerable places were.
The UEA team is working with maritime computer modellers at Liverpool University's department of civil engineering to build up a predictive model of tide and flood conditions as well as shoreline and beach changes.
For the past two winters Prof Vincent and his small team of two researchers and a student have been on standby to take the measurements before and after every storm.
On land they recorded the shape of the beach by zipping up and down on quad bikes, building up a 3-D picture of the site using a global positioning system.
Out at sea jet skis fitted with echo sounders monitored the depth of the water.
However during the worst stormy weather researchers were unable to get out to monitor the damage and so they came up with the plan to install the camera.
If it gets planning permission, the camera will capture the changing shape of the beach and radar data will measure the waves and their impact over a much longer period.
The project has just received a further three years funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Mr Kerby said such academic studies were a nonsense, when £160,000 could buy 4000 tonnes of rock to protect people's homes. Spending big sums researching reefs that caused sea defence problems meant somebody was "having a laugh."
Prof Vincent however said the UEA's share was £400,000, and from a pot for funding research, not defences. He felt the study was a good investment to ensure there was firm data to help spend money wisely in the future.
He also stressed that the low resolution camera would not be able to take detailed pictures of people sunbathing or walking along the beach.