Fugro were commissioned to undertake a post storm LiDAR survey of the soft sedimentary areas along the north coast of Northern Ireland in March 2022. This survey was to cover the following areas: Curran Strand, Portrush East Strand, Portstewart Strand and Downhill Beach to Magilligan.
This project was commissioned following the successive storm events during February and March 2022 (Storm Dudley, Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin) which did considerable damage to the sandy beaches along the North Coast. The objective of this survey was to ascertain change which has occurred along these soft sediment coastlines at the north coast since the baseline survey, which was acquired in 2021.
Data was provided in the same format as the topographic LiDAR data collected in the Northern Ireland 3-Dimensional Coastal Survey to allow changes between these two datasets to be ascertained.
Later in the year Fugro were commissioned to undertake a second LiDAR survey of the north coast from White Rocks to Magilligan in September 2022. The aim of this repeat survey was to ascertain the levels of recovery along the soft sediment coastlines since March 2022.
As with the initial survey undertaken by Fugro this topographic LiDAR survey collected data from the intertidal area to 10m inland for the same soft sediment areas along the north coast, with data being acquired at 0.5m resolution. The survey was quite restrictive when it could be flown: it had to be 2 hours either side of Low Water, during clear conditions below 6000ft, sun had to be at a suitable angle to capture imagery and as photography was being captured the survey could only be flown during day light hours.
All data collected was to be directly comparable with the data collected in the initial post storm Survey undertaken, as this would help us to understand and accurately quantify how our soft, sedimentary coastlines respond and recover from extreme storm events.
This is the Digital Surface Model that was collected as part of the post-storm recovery survey.