pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Using GNSS to Evaluate Threats to Mobility of Resources and People on Coastal Roads in USDOT Region 10

PI: Meagen Wengrove (OSU), meagan.wengrove@oregonstate.edu, ORCID: 0000-0001-7391-8574

Co PIs: Jihye Park (OSU)

AMOUNT & MATCH: $40,000 from PacTrans; $40,000 Match

PERFORMANCE PERIOD: 8/16/2019 – 8/15/2021

STATUS: Completed

CATEGORIES: Coastal Erosion, GNSS

RESEARCH PROJECT HOT SHEET:

UTC PROJECT DOCUMENTATION:

FINAL PROJECT REPORT:

PROJECT DATA:

DESCRIPTION: Our objective is to develop a new technique to assess the hazard intensity of coastal erosion hotspots to existing and planned coastal roadways by continuously monitoring coastal water levels and wave heights using a new remote sensing technique with land-based GNSS.

The proposed technique will measure nearshore water levels and wave heights using land-based and easily mobilized Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which is an all-weather, continuous, global radio satellite system. GNSS is a remote sensing technique. GNSS is easy to install and maintain, it is economical for coastal DOTs to buy with relatively low budgets (an antenna receiver is ~$3000).

GNSS can continuously monitor during storms without being in destructive sea-states (like tide gages and coastal buoys), or depending on optical clarity (like cameras). Additionally, the proposed method generates water level observations with respect to the geodetic datum, which is tied to the land survey datum, so there is no need to convert between datums as with other monitoring techniques.