Remote mapping and analysis of privately-owned coastal structures along the Massachusetts
shoreline
Speaker Name(s):
Category:
Affiliation:
Contact Information:
Lisa McStay
Beach Restoration and Coastal Structures
RPS ASA
lisa.mcstay@rpsgroup.com, (401)-789-6224
55 Village Square Drive
Wakefield, RI 02879
The roughly 1,100 mile ocean-facing shoreline of Massachusetts includes a variety of coastal structures
for stabilization and shore protection. Many of these structures were built prior to modern policies and
regulations, and therefore no comprehensive database of these structures existed. A complete
inventory of these structures provides fundamental information for coastal management, can be used to
compare permitted structures with those actually present, and is useful to assess resilience to coastal
flooding or sea level rise.
Completing an inventory of this magnitude on private property would be prohibitively expensive and
time consuming. For this reason a “remote” approach using ortho-imagery, oblique aerial imagery,
LiDAR digital elevation models and other GIS resources was used to inventory and analyze these
structures. One of the most challenging aspects of the project was correctly extracting the structure
elevations. To account for potential misalignment between the LiDAR DEM and the ortho-imagery as
well as the variability in elevations along each structure a geoprocessing script was developed to cast
profile lines perpendicular to each structure. This “remote” approach proved to be an efficient and
accurate means of inventorying and analyzing these structures and resulted in a comprehensive
database.
Speaker Bio:
Lisa McStay – Ocean Engineer, RPS ASA
Ms. McStay is an Ocean Engineer with Applied Science Associates (dba RPS ASA). She holds a BS in Ocean
Engineering from the University of Rhode Island and has a broad engineering background. Since joining RPS
ASA in September 2010, she has been primarily involved in various types of coastal hazard studies and
climate change related projects including studies related to inundation, coastal flooding, and numerical
modeling of storm surge for a range of clients. Additionally, Ms. McStay has been involved in numerous
coastal risk assessments including sea level rise, storm surge, wave, seiche, and tsunami effects for various
major industrial facilities.