The approaches employed in the ERA-beach project include: (a) the assessment of beach erosion under long- and short-term sea level rise at the island level; (b) the assessment of the current and future erosion of the selected (pilot beaches), based on detailed field information collected using state-of-the-art approaches and the development/application of morphodynamic (2-D) modeling techniques; (c) the design/testing of appropriate technical and cost-effective responses.
Supplementary approaches used are: study of beach erosion trends through the available historical (archive) remote-sensed imagery; development/installation of an integrated Coastal Video Monitoring System (at the Kamari (Santorini) pilot beach); development/testing of a state-of-the-art approach to assess riverine sediment fluxes (at the Eresos pilot beach); development/testing of an approach to study the effects of CV & C on beach attractiveness as a touristic destination (CIT index) on the basis of a questionnaire survey and projections of climatic parameters (temperature, precipitation, waves etc) (at the Kamari (Santorini) pilot beach); cost-benefit analysis of the proposed beach protection technical measures (at the Kamari (Santorini) pilot beach); and an analysis of the current regulation relevant to the planning, design, construction and monitoring of the technical responses. The methodology followed in the ERA-beach project is given in the following flow-chart.
