Research project · 2025–2028 · 12 study sites

Measuring how Ireland’s coast is changing, and sharing the data openly

IMEALL monitors erosion, dune movement and storm impacts at twelve beaches, dunes and saltmarshes from Donegal to Cork. We publish every survey as open data and work with councils and coastal communities on what the results mean for them.

Explore the study sites

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Line drawing of a coastline with survey transects crossing it and marker points along the shore — Fig. 1 — Repeat survey transects across a shoreline (illustration)

study sites, from Donegal to Cork

fixed transects surveyed after every major storm

partner organisations

CC BY

licence on every dataset we publish

Latest updates

All updates

1 Oct 2026Events
Registration open for the community drone survey workshop
Join the survey team in Strandhill on 19 November for a hands-on day on drone surveys and community photo posts.
21 May 2026Project news
IMEALL at Coastal Futures Ireland 2026
Three talks from the team at the (fictional) Coastal Futures Ireland meeting, on drone surveys, fixed cameras and what councils need from monitoring data.
2 Apr 2026Data releases
First open dataset released: 2025 beach profiles
Release 1 of the IMEALL beach profile dataset is now available as a CSV with a methods note, under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

Upcoming events

All events

Field visit: saltmarsh monitoring at Bannow Bay
Sat 7 Nov 2026, 10:00–13:00
In personMeeting point: Bannow Bay car park, Co. Wexford
Fully booked
Reading the shoreline: community drone survey workshop
Thu 19 Nov 2026, 10:00–15:30
In personStrandhill Community Centre (fictional venue), Co. Sligo
23 places left
Webinar: using coastal change data in local authority planning
Thu 3 Dec 2026, 13:00–14:00
OnlineOnline (link sent to registered attendees)
82 places left

How we survey

Each site is surveyed in spring, in autumn and after major storms. We walk fixed transects with RTK-GNSS, fly drones for 3D models of the dunes, and at some sites a fixed camera records the shoreline every day.

The same methods at every site mean the results can be compared from one coast to another, and repeated by others after the project ends.

Example video by GeoNadir, embedded to show the privacy-enhanced player; it was not made by this (fictional) project. Pressing play loads the video from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com). Watch on YouTube.

Recent publications

All publications

Showing 3 of 3 publications

2026Journal article
Seasonal dune-front retreat measured by repeat drone photogrammetry at six Irish beaches
Tomás Breen, Saoirse Kavanagh, Aoife Ní Bhriain
Journal of Coastal Observation (fictional), 14(2), 101–118
PDF: Seasonal dune-front retreat measured by repeat drone photogrammetry at six Irish beaches (56 KB)doi:10.5555/imeall.2026.004
2026Conference paper
A low-cost fixed-camera method for daily shoreline position
Niamh Corless, Ruairí Hegarty, Aoife Ní Bhriain
Proceedings of Coastal Futures Ireland 2026 (fictional), pp. 44–51
PDF: A low-cost fixed-camera method for daily shoreline position (51 KB)doi:10.5555/imeall.2026.002
2026Report
Storm response of a mixed sand-gravel beach: winter 2025/26 field campaign
Cian Ó Murchú, Niamh Corless
IMEALL Technical Report 3
PDF: Storm response of a mixed sand-gravel beach: winter 2025/26 field campaign (66 KB)

Partners

IMEALL is a collaboration between two universities, a marine laboratory and a geomatics company, with an advisory group of councils and coastal community groups. All organisations named on this site are fictional.

Ardnagh University (fictional)Lead partner
Lough Bree Institute of Technology (fictional)Drone survey and photogrammetry
Skerrin Marine Laboratory (fictional)Wave and water-level modelling
Northlight Geomatics Ltd (fictional)Data platform and open data releases

Meet the team and partners