Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications in coastal zone management—a review

Climate change and intense anthropogenic activities have heightened the vulnerability of coastal areas globally. The intensification in the dynamism and uncertainty of coastal processes and change in the past few decades have led researchers and coastal managers to explore new tools with the capability of undertaking a rapid assessment of coastal resources at a relatively lower cost compared with the conventional in situ data collection. The latest advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms and sensor technologies have made them useful environmental remote sensing tools due to the high temporal and spatial resolution and relatively inexpensive operating costs. This study reviews literature that explored UAV applications in five different areas of the coastal zone comprising the intertidal, coastal organisms and habitats, marine litter, coastal zone disaster management, and coastal zone land use and land cover mapping. The review provides evidence of the potentials and effectiveness of UAVs for coastal zone management (CZM). However, factors such as difficulty in imaging water, setting out ground control points (GCPs) for geolocation of images, and processing large volumes of data can pose a challenge to coastal managers. Extensive review shows the capabilities of current UAV technologies for monitoring and tracking changes in the coastal environment at high spatial and temporal resolution.