Instantaneous Shorelines as an Intermediate for Island Shoreline Mapping based on Aerial/Satellite Stereo Images

Abstract

Island shoreline mapping based on field measurements by collecting visually discernible features is costly and even unrealistic to be implemented in practice because of the nonuniqueness, fuzziness, and ambiguity of shoreline features. The MHHW (the mean higher high water) shoreline, i.e., the intersection of the coastal profile with the MHHW, is recommended to be chosen as a significant shoreline indicator of an island. An approach for mapping the MHHW shoreline using the aerial/satellite stereo images is proposed. In the proposed procedure, first, the height difference between the instantaneous shoreline and the MHHW shoreline is calculated by the ocean tide model; then the orthometric/normal height of the instantaneous shoreline is determined from the stereo images; last, the instantaneous shoreline is used as an intermediate for determination of the height of the MHHW shoreline. The proposed procedure is applied to the MiaoZiHu Island located in the East China Sea. Preliminary experimental result shows that in ideal cases, the horizontal positional accuracy of the extracted shoreline can reach 0.2 m from aerial images of 0.1 m resolution.