Rip currents are strong narrow currents that flow seaward from the beach. Under certain conditions, they occur periodically along the coastline and form circulation cells. The high offshore directed flows in rip currents are a hazard for swimmers and regularly lead to incidents during summer season. Currently Deltares is maintaining and constantly refining a system to provide life guards in Egmond aan Zee with simulation forecasts of current velocities and water levels. Objectives The system distributing the rip current forecasts is depending on a big basis of data. Indispensable for the forecast of rip currents is a reliable knowledge of the bathymetry, since rip currents are most likely to be located by rip channels. Up to this point bathymetries have been determined with jet ski surveys twice every season, which constitutes a substantial part of the project costs. In order to economise this system, a new approach to derive bathymetries is examined. Therefore various types of images from the Argus camera system are utilized. The cBathy algorithm uses the images to extrapolate the bathymetrical structure. Therefore extensive investigations on the quality of the algorithms code and its results are continued within this project thesis. |