A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures

Alexandre Maia

, Armanda Rodrigues

, Rute Lemos

, Rui Capit

and Conceic¸

ao Juana Fortes

NOVA LINCS, Departamento de Informtica, FCT-NOVA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica 2829-516, Portugal

Hydraulics and Environment Department (DHA), National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC),

Av. do Brasil, 101, Lisbon, 1700-066, Portugal

Keywords:

Geographic Information System, Coastal Structures, Risk Assessment, Adaptation, Georeferencing, Mobile

Devices.

Abstract:

Due to both its geographic location and maritime importance, Portugal is equipped with a large number of

port infrastructures, the majority of which built for goals such as to guarantee the tranquility of the sheltered

areas of the harbour basins, to help controlling sedimentation by guiding the currents, to protect water taken

from thermoelectric plants, amongst others. In Portugal, the most common of these structures is the rubble-

mound breakwater. Due to its characteristics, maintenance or repair works are common throughout its lifetime.

However, the need for these repair works should be evaluated in advance, in order to avoid signiﬁcant costs

associated to those works or, even worse, the collapse of the structure. It is therefore quite important to evaluate

the Present Condition of the structure, as well its Evolution and Risk Conditions. The Present Condition

is periodically checked on-site and all relevant data gathered is recorded, by ﬁlling in inspection forms, in

order to perform further comparisons and analyses with previous inspections of the structure, as to eventually

characterize Evolution and Risk conditions. To expedite all this process and prevent likely occurrence of errors

in data collection, a monitoring tool, supported through a map-based online geographic information system

(WebGIS) was developed, enabling the georeferencing of the structures concerned. This system adapts to the

location of the user’s device and to the capacities of the device itself. Media data, such as photos and videos

can be associated to the structural data collected. The resulting platform was successfully evaluated by the

involved researchers from Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (which are the end users of

the system), and by non-expert users.

1 INTRODUCTION

Coastal areas represent a dynamic environment of vi-

tal importance for human society. A signiﬁcant part

of human settlements are located near the coast. In

coastal areas and in ports, the evaluation of wave

breaking and overtopping in maritime structures is

very important in order to assess the risk associated

with either the failure of these structures or with the

ﬂooding of the protected structures. In Portugal, be-

cause of the length of the coast line, the concentra-

tion of population and economic activity near the sea

and the importance of ports to the national economy,

the impact of sea agitation on coastal buildings and

structures needs to be taken into account. Recent ex-

amples of emergency situations in Portugal caused by

sea waves hitting the coast are (Sabino et al., 2015):

Esmoriz. Flooding due to overtopping of the seawall

in February 2011, with damages in the infrastruc-

ture and homes along the seafront;

Estoril. Frequent overtopping of the seawall, which

afects its use and disrupts the nearby railway line;

Praia da Vit

oria Port, Azores. Strong overtopping

of the breakwaters completely destroyed the struc-

tures after a December 2001 storm;

Marina do Lugar de Baixo, Madeira. Repeated

events of massive overtopping of the breakwater

in 2006, damaging the structure quite seriously

and leading to the marina inoperability.

To this date, records of the condition of a mar-

itime structure or of parts of it are mostly generated

on paper, a media more prone to mistakes. The orig-

inal paper ﬁlling forms will, on the other hand, most

likely be passed onto a computer ﬁle. This further

step means additional delay and constitutes another

possible source of errors and inconsistencies.

It is therefore important to implement an on-

line system to support and facilitate the direct digi-

102

Maia, A., Rodrigues, A., Lemos, R., Capitão, R. and Fortes, C.

A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures.

DOI: 10.5220/0006335401020111

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM 2017), pages 102-111

ISBN: 978-989-758-252-3

tal gathering of information during visual inspection

of coastal structures, which is conducted periodically.

Relevant information to be collected includes struc-

tural data as well as media content, such as photos

and videos, captured from previously deﬁned loca-

tions physically marked on the ground and considered

relevant for the evaluation of the structure.

In this paper, a WebGIS system for the on-site col-

lection of information concerning the current struc-

tural condition of coastal structures, is presented.

The geographic features associated with each relevant

structure can be periodically uploaded into the sys-

tem, in shapeﬁle format, and consequently overlaid on

a map of the region. Information on the general prop-

erties of the structures, such as their length, width and

other characteristics is also contemplated on the sys-

tem’s database. The location of Observation points

(previously deﬁned locations for analysis and photo

capture) is also stored on the database and superim-

posed on the map as yellow markers. The gathered

photos and videos can be accessed thanks to the as-

sociation of these markers with the ﬁles located in a

directory of the server. All of this enables the geo-

graphic referencing of the coastal structures and of

the photos captured. The database also contains all

the alphanumeric information that is collected during

visual inspections.

The coastal structures considered in this system

are composed of sections and the availability of this

information enables the qualitative and quantitative

evaluation of the so-called Present Condition of these

sections. When more than one visual inspection of the

same structure are available on the system, collected

at different dates, Evolution Conditions can also be

calculated. A Risk Condition can be calculated when

the Present Condition, as well as the Evolution Con-

dition, are available. These parameters help to deﬁne

and prioritize the structure’s needs for repair.

This system improves on the existing methodol-

ogy for the evaluation of the condition of coastal

structures, adding in productivity and minimizing

mistakes, by saving the time previously used in in-

serting, into the computer, all the information that was

gathered, on paper, during a visual inspection. It also

enables the integration of all the relevant information,

in the evaluation of the condition of coastal structures,

into a single platform, instead of having the photos

and the alphanumeric information completely sepa-

rated. Moreover, the system facilitates the overall

process of collecting data during visual inspection as

well as accessing and visualizing them later on desk-

top (and other mobile) platforms.

This work results from a collaboration between re-

searchers of the Portuguese National Laboratory for

Civil Engineering (LNEC) and the NOVA Labora-

tory for Computer Science and Informatics (NOVA

LINCS).

2 CONCEPTS

Ports are infrastructures where wave tranquility is

mandatory in order to enable mooring, loading and

unloading of ships and also to ensure the safety

of people, goods and the ships themselves (Fortes,

2015). Ports were initially installed in naturally shel-

tered areas such as bays, estuaries and areas protected

by islands. However, more recent harbours have been

created in less protected regions, which led to the need

for protective structures.

Ports can be classiﬁed according to type, location,

use and size. We can highlight three types of ports:

Natural. ports are those where improvement works

are not necessary to guarantee the shelter of the

port and the access to the berths, since the natural

conditions already provide these guarantees;

Artiﬁcial. ports are those where it is necessary to

construct structures to improve the shelter and the

conditions of access of ships to the berths;

Semi-natural. ports are located in a cove or are pro-

tected by promontories on both sides, and only

necessary to ensure an artiﬁcial protection at their

entrance.

Ports are composed of:

• Protective works (breakwaters, jetties and others);

• Access and navigation channels;

• Docking structures - to moor ships, transfer pas-

sengers and move and store goods;

• Earth facilities.

In the context of the platform presented in this pa-

per, one will focus on rubble mound breakwaters. A

breakwater is an obstacle that reduces the action of

waves in the area sheltered by the structure. The ac-

tion of the waves is reduced by a combination of re-

ﬂection and dissipation of the energy on the breakwa-

ter protective structure. In broad terms, breakwaters

can have the following goals:

• To protect port facilities;

• To enable the mooring of ships and their safe load-

ing and unloading;

• To help in the control of sedimentation, in guiding

the currents and creating areas with different rates

of agitation;

A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures

103

• To protect water outlets from thermoelectric

power plants and the coast line against the action

of tsunamis.

Figure 1: Rubble-mound Breakwater structure.

These structures may be divided into several

types:

Rubble-mound Breakwaters. are the most common

port protection structures that exist in Portugal

(Lemos and Santos, 2007b). A rubble-mound

breakwater has a trapezoidal shape (see Figure 1),

with a core of undifferentiated loose materials that

is protected by one or more layers of possibly dif-

ferent types of material, also loose. They are easy

to build and maintain and efﬁcient in dissipating

wave energy;

Vertical-front Breakwaters. Vertical-front break-

waters are another major class of breakwater

structures (USACE, 2006). The basic structure

element is usually a sandﬁlled caisson made of

reinforced concrete, but blockwork types made

of stacked precast concrete blocks are also used.

Caisson breakwaters might be divided into the

following types:

Conventional, i.e., the caisson is placed on a rel-

atively thin stone bedding layer (Figure 2);

Figure 2: Conventional caisson breakwater with vertical

front.

Vertical Composite, i.e., the caisson is placed

on a high rubble-mound foundation (Figure 3).

This type is economical in deep waters. Con-

crete caps may be placed on shore-connected

caissons;

Figure 3: Vertical composite caisson breakwater.

Horizontal Composite , i.e., the front of the

caisson is covered by armor units or a rubble-

mound structure (multilayer or homogeneous)

(Figure 4). This type of breakwater is typ-

ically used in shallow water; however, there

have been applications in deeper water where

impulsive wave pressures are likely to occur.

The effects of the mound are reduction of wave

reﬂection, wave impact, and wave overtopping.

Depending on bottom conditions, a ﬁlter layer

may be needed beneath the rubble-mound por-

tion;

Figure 4: Horizontal composite caisson breakwater.

Coastal structures, particularly breakwaters, are

structures to which a great risk is assumed at the de-

sign stage, due to the degree of uncertainty associated

with the demands themselves and the characteristics

of the materials used in their construction (Oliveira et

al., 2005). Although this risk is assumed, since a pos-

sible collapse is not generally associated with the loss

of human life, economic cost is, as a rule, very high.

It is known, therefore, that during the lifetime of

the structure, repair works will be necessary as well

as maintenance, due the fatigue of the parts and of

the materials involved in the construction. However,

in order for these interventions to be effectively car-

ried out in time and at the lowest possible cost, the

systematic inspection of the structures is highly rec-

ommended.

This is the main reason for the implementation of

the software platform presented in this paper.

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104

3 RELATED WORK

One of the goals of the work presented in this paper

was to develop a WebGIS application to facilitate the

task of collecting information during a visual inspec-

tion of the monitored structure. Moreover, the system

should allow access to the stored information on the

evolution of the condition of the structures over the

years, enabling the comparison of the Present Condi-

tion of one structure with its stored condition, deter-

mined at an earlier relevant date (5 years before or at

an earlier date, if repairing works took place). Pre-

vious related work has been accomplished with the

aim of collecting and storing, in database format (in

Microsoft Access), the data collected in previous in-

spections. This database was called ANOSOM and

has been in use, these last years, by the researchers of

LNEC.

Figure 5: ANOSOM database tables’ relationships.

The ﬁrst version of the ANOSOM (Reis and Silva,

1995) database was developed in 1995, with the dou-

ble goal of storing all the information gathered in vi-

sual inspection campaigns on coastal structures car-

ried out by LNEC and facilitating the diagnosis of

the problems presented by each inspected structure,

in order to identify potential needs for maintenance

or repair work. The collection of qualitative infor-

mation related to the deterioration of the breakwa-

ter materials in proﬁle elements, which can only be

obtained through visual inspection, is of major im-

portance in the evaluation of the condition of these

structures. It was thus decided that the ANOSOM

database should contain information collected in the

visual inspection campaigns, in addition to the gen-

eral information about the characteristics of the struc-

ture (Lemos et al., 2002; Lemos and Santos, 2007a).

Thus, the basic functionality of the 2007 version of

ANOSOM application included:

1. Inserting, correcting, and deleting data;

2. Processing the inserted data in order to diagnose

the problems of the structure.

Three main categories of data were identiﬁed:

1. Structure data, which includes the data relating to

the conceptual division of the structure into sec-

tions, the characterization of the proﬁle envelope

elements of each of these sections and the dates of

repair/maintenance work performed on those sec-

tions;

2. Visual inspection campaign data, including the

content ﬁlled in inspection forms and the pho-

tographs taken during those campaigns;

3. Structure survey data, containing the coordinates

of the surveyed points and the envelope surface

deﬁned in a regular mesh.

Nevertheless, it did not contemplate functionality

to handle multimedia data. In fact, the photos taken

during inspections were not added to the database,

rather they were gathered in folders and the GeoSetter

application

was used to access the photos metadata,

such as position (latitude and longitude) and orienta-

tion of photo captures.

The platform presented in this paper reveals some

similarities with the work described by (Pires et al.,

2009). This work provides a spatial representa-

tion of breakwaters and sea walls of the Espinho

shoreline, in Portugal, and enables the evaluation of

the current condition of coastal protection structures

through photos and additional alphanumeric informa-

tion. However, the system’s user interface does not

adapt when using a mobile device and the information

presented to the user does not consider his location.

Another related project is the one presented by

(Marujo et al., 2013), which contemplates a database

with information on coastal structures and a GIS in-

terface which supports the georeferencing of coastal

protection works. Moreover, it enables the genera-

tion of inspection forms in printed and digital format.

However, this system requires an Android mobile de-

vice 4.x version smartphone or tablet. The platform

presented below is not restricted to one speciﬁc oper-

ating system.

(Marujo, 2016) lists a comprehensive number of

similar systems, both national and international, by

looking at their particular implementation details and

by describing their advantages and disadvantages.

There is also a related work consisting on a

database prepared by HR Wallingford and TU Delft

(Allsop et al., 2009) with the assistance of the in-

ternational breakwater community, made freely avail-

able for the beneﬁt of breakwater designers, contrac-

tors owners and developers worldwide. Although this

http://www.geosetter.de/en/

A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures

105

database provides some technical information, like

some geometrical characteristics and design criteria,

as well as the owner, contractor and consultant names,

its aim is not the monitoring and diagnosis of the

structures.

4 IMPLEMENTATION

The developed system follows an architectural struc-

ture used in the development of WebGIS systems. It

is described in the next subsection.

4.1 Architecture

The general architecture of the developed application

is represented in Figure 6. It is divided into three lay-

ers: the presentation layer, the logic layer and the

database layer. This type of architecture enables a

separation of functionality that supports its evolution

and maintenance. The tools used for the development

of each layer are also described.

Figure 6: System architecture.

The presentation layer is the layer that enables the

user to interact with the system and is developed in

HTML, CSS and the base map was OpenStreetMap.

HTML is responsible for displaying the elements that

are present in the interface, while CSS is used to pro-

vide the style of those elements. The maps that are

shown in the application, both on the home page and

on the page corresponding to the photos of a section,

are provided by OpenStreetMap. This is the layer

through which the user interacts with the system and

it is responsible for sending the input produced by the

user to the logic layer, and consequently for display-

ing the data from the logic layer back to the user for

feedback.

The logic layer is divided into two main compo-

nents, the client side and the server side. The client

side was developed with Leaﬂet, jQuery and Boot-

strap, which rely on JavaScript. Leaﬂet allows the in-

teraction with the OpenStreetMap map. Bootstrap is

used to create a responsive interface in order to adapt

to the user’s device. Finally, jQuery supports the ma-

nipulation of interface elements.

The database layer is made available through the

MySQL database management system, which stores

all the information regarding the sections of the

coastal structures, such as their characteristics, the

data of the visual inspections and the various points of

each section and their photographs/videos. The con-

nection to the database is established through PHP.

4.2 Functionalities

Due to privacy concerns regarding the information

handled by the system, only LNEC researchers can

access it. Thus, some security measures were imple-

mented, including password protection. After the lo-

gin, the user is redirected to a page where he can now

access the world map provided by OpenStreetMap.

Once he accesses the map, the shapeﬁle features, in-

cluding all the breakwaters in the database, are loaded

into the map. The geographic features are displayed

in blue and each structure is divided into several sec-

tions. Each of these sections has a unique code that

is stored in the .dbf part of the shapeﬁle. This infor-

mation allows the connection between the geographic

representation of the sections of each structure, on the

map interface, with their respective information on

the MySQL database, enabling the contextual view-

ing of a breakwater section’s general (as well as in-

spection) data.

4.3 Breakwater and User Location

One of the most important aspects regarding the vi-

sual inspections is the user’s current location. Data

capture is location-based, so the system must be able

to associate the captured information with the correct

breakwater section. To do this, the user must turn on

the location identiﬁcation of the device that she is us-

ing, and the system captures the user’s current posi-

tion, placing a red marker on the map interface. The

system then tries to associate the user’s current po-

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106

Figure 7: Photos from a section of a structure.

sition to a particular section of a structure (the one

that is nearest) to be inspected. To speed up detec-

tion, only the structures that are visible on the map

window, at the moment of detection, are considered

for inspection. The time taken to detect the section

chosen for inspection is important, as the number of

structures to be added to the system is large and the

search will be executed on a mobile device. The al-

gorithm used for section selection is an adaptation of

the Point In Polygon algorithm (Franklin, 2006) by

W. Randolph Franklin.

Thus, once the user’s location has been detected,

as the user walks on a structure, the system will asso-

ciate the data he collects with one of its sections. In

this context, the user can either add observations on

that section or deﬁne new points of observation.

4.4 Photos and Videos

Media data collection has been contemplated in the

platform and, particularly for jpeg photos, it is possi-

ble to gather exif metadata from the ﬁle and directly

add it to the system. Thus, when a jpeg photo is taken

near a speciﬁc point of observation, the system cap-

tures latitude, longitude, altitude and orientation of

the photo from the ﬁle’s metadata and directly cre-

ates an association of the photo with the point. Af-

terwards, a request to view the photos gathered at

this point of observation will include the correspond-

ing photo. In fact, all the photos taken and collected

on that point are presented to the user for viewing.

Moreover, when viewing the photos, the user has the

chance to check the photos’ metadata, with the help

of a map where the orientation of capture is displayed

(see Figure 7). This feature enables the ofﬂine upload

of photos into the platform, for example, when photos

are taken using a particular camera and not using the

mobile device.

The user can also capture and associate a video to

a point of observation. However, in this case, only the

date of upload is stored in the system, no metadata is

loaded. The method for uploading videos is similar to

the one used for photos. The user clicks on a point of

observation, shown on the map, which causes the up-

load pop-up window to open, then presses the camera

button icon (when using a mobile device), takes the

photo/video (or chooses a photo/video that has been

previously captured) and the ﬁle upload starts auto-

matically. After a few moments, the photo/video is

stored in a folder on the server, becoming associated

with the chosen point of observation. Consequently,

the ﬁle also becomes part of the observation informa-

tion associated with the section of the breakwater that

owns the observation point.

4.5 Information about a Rubble-mound

Breakwater

Each section in a structure has very speciﬁc charac-

teristics, as shown in Figure 8, such as its size in

length and width, information about the superstruc-

ture/crown, the armour layer, the outer crest berm, the

inner crest berm and so on. This information has to do

essentially with the slope of the outer armour layer,

the width, the values of the maximum and minimum

dimensions and their materials (the type of blocks,

the weight, the layout, etc). To facilitate information

viewing and analysis, the section interface page in-

cludes an interactive drawing of a breakwater making

it possible to view a particular part of the information

by clicking on the structure’s relevant part. The in-

terface has also been structured with several tabs and

a navigation bar (at the top of the page) allowing the

user to navigate to other pages to see the photos and

A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures

107

Figure 8: Information about a Rubble-mound Breakwater.

videos of the section, to access section observations

(according to the selected date) and to analyse the

characteristics of other sections belonging to the same

structure.

4.6 Visual Inspections

Periodically, the structures are subjected to visual in-

spection, performed by LNEC researchers. In gen-

eral, the structure is inspected yearly but additional

inspections may be performed, specially after strong

storms.The data collected refer to the current condi-

tion of the armour layer, the superstructure and the in-

ner ﬁlters. To facilitate data gathering, most of these

data are entered into the inspection forms via radio

buttons. Predeﬁned, qualitative, values scales have

been deﬁned as, for example, in the case of the num-

ber of unit displacements, which may have occurred,

where values can be 0 (None), 1 (Few), 2 (Some) or

3 (Many). These and other values contribute to cal-

culate the Present Condition of that part of the sec-

tion of the structure, and these range between 0 and

5. LNEC researchers have developed a methodology

that enables the evaluation of the Present Condition of

the structure and its evolution (Santos, 2000; Santos

et al., 2003). If at least two visual inspections have

been performed, it is possible to calculate the Evolu-

tion Condition. The Risk Condition associated with

the structure can be calculated from existing informa-

tion on the Present Condition and the Evolution Con-

dition.

5 EVALUATION OF THE SYSTEM

The aim of the evaluation process was to assess the

usability of the developed platform as well as its use-

fulness for National Laboratory for Civil Engineering

researchers in the data collection and structure eval-

uation activities. The methodology for the evalua-

tion was designed with the goal of collecting as much

qualitative feedback as possible, in order to obtain

material for future improvements, as well as to evalu-

ate the result of the developed application, in the ﬁnal

evaluation phase.

During the evaluation process, users were asked to

perform various tasks in the developed system. Some

tasks were to be performed on a desktop platform,

while others were intended to be performed on a mo-

bile device, as in a situation of a ﬁeld campaign. After

each task was completed, each user was asked to com-

plete a questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided

into two parts.

The ﬁrst part consisted of the System Usability

Scale (SUS). The second part was composed by spe-

ciﬁc questions related to speciﬁc functionalities of the

application. The platform was evaluated by 14 non-

expert users and by 4 LNEC researchers, which are

the end users of the platform. The questionnaire was

improved for the latter testers (there were some ad-

ditional questions and some existing questions were

made more speciﬁc), given the knowledge they have

on the scope of the developed application.

The SUS (Brooke, 1996, 2013) was used because,

as described by the authors, it provides a robust, reli-

able and cost-effective method for evaluating the us-

ability of a computational tool. Because it has been

widely used, it has become one of the top tools to

support this type of evaluation, enabling effective dif-

ferentiation between usable and unusable systems.

Another advantage of using SUS is that it is a

small questionnaire, which leads to greater receptivity

on the part of testers to answer its questions. SUS is

composed of the following 10 sentences, each evalu-

GISTAM 2017 - 3rd International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management

108

ated using a ﬁve-point scale, ranging from Strongly

disagree (the lowest value) to Strongly agree (the

highest value):

1. I think that I would like to use this system fre-

quently;

2. I found the system unnecessarily complex;

3. I thought the system was easy to use;

4. I think that I would need the support of a technical

person to be able to use this system;

5. I found the various functions in this system were

well integrated;

6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this

system;

7. I would imagine that most people would learn to

use this system very quickly;

8. I found the system very cumbersome to use;

9. I felt very conﬁdent using the system;

10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get

going with this system.

Although SUS was only designed to measure us-

ability, (Lewis and Sauro, 2009) suggest that two

components can be derived from SUS - usability as

well as learnability. Therefore, both components were

considered to complete the overall value of the SUS,

in order to provide a better perception of the total us-

ability of the developed application. Figures 9 and

10 show the results of the SUS questionnaire for reg-

ular users and for LNEC researchers. Each vertical

line represents a user and in each of those lines there

are 3 values calculated based on the user’s answers,

the value for the overall SUS score, the value for the

Usability and the value for the Learnability. Below

those lines, one can see the adjective that the user

chose for the user friendliness of the platform. It is

a seven-point adjective-anchored Likert scale rang-

ing from Worst Possible to Best Possible. There is

a green line placed at value 68 and it represents the

mean value for web interfaces according to (Sauro,

2011). A value above that line is thus considered, by

the authors, above the average, while a value under

that line is below average. From these graphics, the

average, maximum, minimum and the standard devi-

ation for each of the three components evaluated were

calculated, with the resulting values shown in table 1

and table 2.

Both evaluation results put the platform above the

68 value, the average of the SUS questionnaire be-

ing 73.39 for regular users and 84.38 for LNEC re-

searchers. The learnability average for regular users

value is quite high (higher than the usability), which

leads us to conclude that the platform learning curve

is a reduced one, an interesting results for the pur-

poses of the work, as the use of the platform in the

ﬁeld may often be performed by non-expert users.

However, some evaluation results were not as good

as the rest, which led to an analysis of the requests

and suggestions provided by the testers. All the sug-

gestions of the testers were analysed and added to the

platform. Those suggestions were related with the

usability of the platform. Warning and conﬁrmation

messages before deleting data were added. The User

Interface also suffered some adjustments in order to

become more user friendly. Geocoding was added,

enabling a user to type the name of a place or city and

the map becomes centered on that place. The pos-

sibility to upload videos was also only implemented

after the tests. All of these improvements led to a suc-

cessful improvement of the system.

Figure 9: SUS results from regular users.

Table 1: SUS results from regular users.

SUS Usab Learn

Medium 73.39 71.65 81.25

Maximum 95 96.88 100

Minimum 42.5 37.5 37.5

Standard Deviation 14.41 16.65 20.66

Figure 10: SUS results from National Laboratory for Civil

Engineering researchers.

A Web Platform for the Systematic Monitoring of Coastal Structures

109

Table 2: SUS results from National Laboratory for Civil

Engineering researchers.

SUS Usab Learn

Medium 84.38 84.38 84.38

Maximum 97.5 100 100

Minimum 62.5 62.5 62.5

Standard Deviation 15.19 15.73 15.73

6 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents the development of an online re-

sponsive platform, implemented to facilitate the vi-

sual inspections of coastal structures, carried out pe-

riodically by LNEC. The system, a WebGIS, enables

the geographic visualization of coastal structures on

mobile devices and lets the user collect a new obser-

vation, when located near a structure. Some of the

inserted values are ﬁlled in by the user, like the type

of unit displacement, the state of the armour slope,

the degradation of the materials, etc. All these values

are used to compute the Present Condition of a part

of the section of the structure. A new point of ob-

servation of the structure can also be added, allowing

the user to then associate photos or videos to it. As

the photographic and video recordings are very im-

portant, this feature is crucial to the system. Also, the

photos can be captured using a particular camera with

no geotagging capabilities, and the association of ge-

ographic details to a point of observation can be per-

formed ofﬂine. The system reads the metadata of jpg

ﬁles, which includes latitude and longitude, and thus

associates the photo to the retrieved location. The ori-

entation and altitude are also read from the jpg ﬁle

and stored in the database. To summarize, the func-

tionalities present on the system can be divided into:

Georeferencing. Structures and their sections are

displayed on a map. Points of observation of the

structure are also present on the map with a yellow

marker;

User Current Location. The system can geographi-

cally locate the user, using a red marker. Every 10

seconds the user location is updated and the red

marker is moved, if the user has moved;

Photos and Videos The user can capture a photo or

record a video, associate it to a point of observa-

tion and, consequently, to a section of the struc-

ture.

Information from a Section. Each structure is di-

vided into several sections and each of those sec-

tions has several parts. The platform includes a

visual (geographic) representation of the structure

and associates structural database data with this

representation.

Visual Inspections. Periodically, it is necessary to

inspect the structures. The analysis may also be

performed in place. Unit displacements which

have occurred, fractures and degradations of ma-

terials must be considered. All these data are

stored on the database and geographically associ-

ated with the corresponding location on the struc-

ture. The collected information is used to calcu-

late the Present Condition of that part of the struc-

ture’s section.

The platform was evaluated by expert and non-expert

users with good results and all the suggestions and

requests were added to the platform. Currently, the

system is being installed at LNEC for production use.

6.1 Future Work

As coastal structures largely differ, the authors would

like to update the platform to enable administrative

conﬁguration of the information viewed on the inter-

face, so that the researchers could, by themselves,

change and evolve the structure of the database.

Moreover, an ofﬂine version, which would not need

an Internet connection on location, would be most

welcomed by the researchers and should be consid-

ered.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially supported by project NOVA

LINCS Ref. UID/CEC/04516/2013.

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