VCMP Sites - Shorelines: Victorian Coastline Monitoring Data

Victoria's coastline features shorelines from the Victorian Coastal Monitoring Program, represented as polyline data. The dataset combines short-term drone survey outputs with long-term satellite-derived shorelines from Digital Earth Australia for the period 1988 to 2021. It is provided by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and was last updated in June 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing short-term shoreline change based on drone-derived +1 m AHD (open coast) and +0.5 m AHD (bay) contours.
• Modeling long-term coastal trends based on mean annual mid-tide shorelines extracted from satellite imagery from 1988 to 2021.
• Assessing positional uncertainty in shoreline data based on described vertical (0.1 m DSM) and cross-shore (1 m) uncertainties.
• Comparing different shoreline proxies such as the backshore line (onshore extent of active sandy beach) and the instantaneous wet/dry line for bay sites.

Strengths

• Includes multiple data sources: VCMP drone surveys, DEA satellite imagery (1988-2021), and historical aerial imagery.
• Provides specific vertical uncertainty estimates: 0.1 m for drone survey DSMs and 1-3 m for DEA shorelines.
• Shoreline data is standardized by interpolation to a common set of 30-meter spaced transects.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The 30-meter alongshore spacing may be too low to define complex, small-scale shoreline features.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (Victoria, Australia)

Collection Method

Combines drone surveys, satellite imagery analysis (Digital Earth Australia), and aerial imagery rectification.

Time Range

1988 to 2021 for DEA satellite-derived shorelines; drone survey dates are not specified.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-15 00:36:00.367025; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Coastline of Victoria, Australia, including open coast and large bay sites.