Post-Storm LiDAR Digital Surface Model for Northern Ireland's North Coast

March 2022 LiDAR survey of soft sedimentary coastlines in Northern Ireland, commissioned to assess damage from successive storms Dudley, Eunice, and Franklin. The dataset is a Digital Surface Model covering Curran Strand, Portrush East Strand, Portstewart Strand, and Downhill Beach to Magilligan. It was provided in the same format as a 2021 baseline survey to enable direct change detection.

Use Cases

• Quantifying volumetric beach loss based on post-storm elevation data.
• Modeling coastal erosion rates by comparing this DSM to the 2021 baseline survey.
• Informing coastal management and defense strategies for specific beaches like Portstewart Strand.
• Assessing the geomorphic impact of specific storm events (Dudley, Eunice, Franklin).

Strengths

• Provides direct, high-resolution topographic data for change detection against a known 2021 baseline.
• Covers four specific, named coastal areas of interest for targeted analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on UK and EU open data portals signals official importance and accessibility.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are unknown.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-04-15 conflicts with the dataset's content date of March 2022, suggesting possible metadata mismanagement.
• The dataset's utility is dependent on access to the separate 2021 baseline survey for comparative analysis.

Provenance

Source

Fugro, commissioned for the survey. Hosted by OpenDataNI.

Collection Method

Airborne topographic LiDAR survey.

Time Range

March 2022

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:22:10.419527 (metadata update, but data is from March 2022)

Geography

North coast of Northern Ireland, specifically Curran Strand, Portrush East Strand, Portstewart Strand, and Downhill Beach to Magilligan.