Programme Aims

A strategic regional coastal monitoring programme for the South West of England, to provide freely available data of consistently high quality across the region.

Local Authorities, the Environment Agency and Coastal Groups of the South West of England are working with a collective vision, to develop a long-term region wide coastal process monitoring and analysis programme.

Following many years of ad-hoc monitoring of coastal processes within the South West, an extensive integrated survey programme has been developed to cover over 1000km of open coastline and estuaries between Portland Bill, in Dorset and Beachley Point in Gloucestershire. The Programme is expected to cost approx £7.2m over a period of five years, but with an expectation that the Programme will continue long term. It is 100% grant aided by DEFRA. Funding commenced in April 2006. Data will be collected via a series of contracts which were awarded in late 2006/ early 2007.

Large quantities of data will be made freely available from the survey and analysis programme; this is expected to be useful to Local Authorities within the region, the Environment Agency, consultants in coastal defence, conservation management, academic research and for educational purposes.

A specialist team has been established at the Plymouth Coastal Observatory (PCO), to manage the programme and develop the data analysis, storage and dissemination procedures. Most of the data collected by the programme will be made freely available, although some data sets provided by third parties may be restricted, for copyright reasons. Data will be made available via the map viewer and data catalogue section of the website.

PCO has been set up at the University of Plymouth with the aim of establishing strong links with research communities in the South West, to provide opportunities for value added research programmes.