GIScience & Remote Sensing

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Coastline extraction using remote sensing: a

review

Weiwei Sun, Chao Chen, Weiwei Liu, Gang Yang, Xiangchao Meng, Lihua
Wang & Kai Ren

To cite this article: Weiwei Sun, Chao Chen, Weiwei Liu, Gang Yang, Xiangchao Meng, Lihua
Wang & Kai Ren (2023) Coastline extraction using remote sensing: a review, GIScience &
Remote Sensing, 60:1, 2243671, DOI: 10.1080/15481603.2023.2243671

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GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING
2023, VOL. 60, NO. 1, 2243671
https://doi.org/10.1080/15481603.2023.2243671

REVIEW

Coastline extraction using remote sensing: a review

Weiwei Suna, Chao Chenb, Weiwei Liua, Gang Yanga, Xiangchao Mengc, Lihua Wanga and Kai Rena
a
Department of Geography and Spatial Information Techniques, Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China; bSchool of Geography Science
and Geomatics Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China; cFaculty of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Coastlines are important basic geographic elements and mapping their spatial and attribute Received 25 August 2022
changes can help monitor, model and manage coastal zones. Traditional studies focused on the Accepted 28 July 2023
accuracy of extraction methods and the evolution characteristics of coastlines. Thanks to the KEYWORDS
advances in remote sensing for earth observations, recent coastline extraction studies can reveal Coastline; remote sensing;
detailed ocean-land interaction changes. In this review, we aim to identify key milestones in image analysis; review;
coastline extraction using remote sensing by associating the emergence of major research topics implementation
with the occurrence of multiple application fields, multiple data sources, and multiple algorithms.
Specifically, we define coastlines that can be applied to different application fields, summarize the
characteristics of coastline products, and analyze the principles, advantages and disadvantages of
methods. On this basis, we discussed the development direction and the challenges involved. This
study provides practical insights that can be incorporated into the future development of coastline
extraction approaches using remote sensing technologies.

1. Introduction
The coastline is the dividing line between the ocean
and the mainland, and is one of the basic elements of
topographic maps and charts; it is also recognized by
the International Commission for Geographic Data as
one of the 27 surface elements (Chen et al. 2019,
2019; Gens 2010; Yang et al. 2022). The areas along
coastlines represent the transition regions between
land and sea, the distribution center of many materi­
als and energy, and strong coupling regions of various
processes (e.g. physical, chemical, biological, and geo­
logical) (Liu et al. 2013a; Hou et al. 2020; Mujabar and
Chandrasekar 2013). Influenced by land, ocean, atmo­
sphere, and human activities, coastlines have unique
geographic and dynamic characteristics; and their
position, trend, and form change constantly (Bera
and Maiti 2019; Gens 2010; Ghosh, Kumar, and Roy
2015; Wang et al. 2017, 2019b; Wu et al. 2020).
Coastlines have important ecological functions and
resource value (Angulo, Lessa, and de Souza 2006).
With improved transportation, large population
growth, rapid economic development, and increas­
ingly prominent geographic importance, the areas
along coastlines have become one of the regions
with the most frequent and intense human activities
(Bera and Maiti 2019; Ghosh, Kumar, and Roy 2015;
Konko et al. 2020). More than half of the world’s
population lives within the range of 60 km from
a coastline, and two-thirds of cities with
a population of more than 2.5 million are located
near tidal estuaries (Green et al. 1996; Liu et al. 2019;
Mimura 2013; Small and Nicholls 2003). However,
rapid economic development and limited land
resources have led to significant changes in the nat­
ural ecological environment of coastal areas
(Vassilakis and Papadopoulou-Vrynioti 2014; Zhang
and Hou 2020). Since the 20th century, the economic
centers of the world’s coastal countries have shifted
to coastal areas (Mimura 2013; Small and Nicholls
2003). With the construction of various coastal pro­
jects and the rapid development of the regional econ­
omy, the natural attributes of coastlines have been
reduced rapidly, and their original production capa­
city and ecological function have changed signifi­
cantly (Bell, Bird, and Plater 2016; Green et al. 1996).
From 1980 to 2015, China’s coastline increased by

CONTACT Chao Chen ayang198206@163.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which
permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been
published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
2 W. SUN ET AL.
3,000 km while its natural coastline decreased by 50%
(Wang, Hou, and Wang 2017; Wu, Hou, and Xu 2014).
Therefore, many scholars have studied how to objec­
tively understand the evolution characteristics of the
temporal and spatial patterns of coastlines, and quan­
titatively evaluate how they are impacted by human
activities and how they dynamically respond to
human disturbance.
Remote sensing technologies can obtain a large
amount of information regarding the spatial struc­
tures and detailed textures of ground objects from
airborne and satellite platforms and are used in many
applications, including urban monitoring, disaster
management, agriculture, and forestry (Im 2020; Im,
Park, and Takeuchi 2019; Klemas 2012; Yang et al.
2022, 2023). Several remote sensing techniques are
commonly used to detect and monitor coastlines
(Boak and Turner 2005; Chen et al. 2019, 2019; Nandi
et al. 2016). Traditionally, coastlines were extracted
using photogrammetry (Chen et al. 2014, 2019,
2021). The launch of satellites with sensors in the
visible and infrared electromagnetic spectra, such as
MODIS, Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI, Sentinel 1/2FormoSat-
2, SPOT, IKONOS, Quickbird, CBERS, and Gaofen-1/2,
has offered an alternative to field measurements (Bell,
Bird, and Plater 2016; Chen et al. 2019; Chu et al. 2013;
Gens 2010; Jia et al. 2021; Li and Gong 2016; Wang
et al. 2019b; Wu et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2014). The
development of airborne SAR interferometry and air­
borne laser ranging has allowed overcoming the lim­
itations of optical electromagnetic spectra to
delineate coastlines under cloud cover (Bell, Bird,
and Plater 2016). Placing high-definition cameras
along the coasts also improves the real-time perfor­
mance of coastline monitoring (Angnuureng et al.
2016; Bracs et al. 2016).
Previous reviews of coastline extraction using
remote sensing technology have mainly focused on
existing indicators, methods and spatio-temporal
characteristics, providing few details about develop­
ment and future research direction. With the diversi­
fication of observation platforms and advancement of
sensors, remote sensing data sources are increasingly
used for coastline detection. In the current study, our
primary goal is to review the current status of the
technologies for coastline extraction by using remote
sensing imagery. First, we provide a definition of
coastline. Then, products and data sources are sum­
marized. Finally, the methodologies for coastline
extraction using remote sensing technologies are
described in detail, clarifying their advantages and
disadvantages and their development and future
research direction are discussed.
2. Definition of coastline
A coastline is an important geomorphological type in
coastal zones, providing valuable resources for human
survival and development (Vos et al. 2019). As the divid­
ing line between land and sea, the coastline changes
position with the ebb and flow of the tide. The defini­
tions and locations of a coastline in different research
fields and applications is shown in Figure 1. In physical
geography, the coastline is the upper boundary affected
by the ocean’s storm surge. In marine management and
geomatics, the coastline refers to the boundary between
sea and land at the mean high water surface of spring
tides, also known in oceanography as the mean higher
high water (MHHW). In remote sensing, a coastline is the
water boundary at the moment of remote sensing ima­
ging and is also known as instantaneous water. From the
perspective of shipping safety, a coastline is defined as
the boundary between sea and land at the mean low
water surface of spring tides, also known in oceanogra­
phy as mean higher low water. With the regular move­
ment of the tide, a boundary exists between sea and
land at the mean low water surface of low tides, also
known in oceanography as mean lower low water
(MLLW).
In Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, “shoreline,” “coast­
line,” and “waterline” mean the edge of the sea, the
ocean, or a lake; the land along a coast; and the level
that the water reaches along the side of a ship,
respectively. None of these terms reflects the dynamic
and professional characteristics of the land-water
boundary. The term “shoreline” is used by the coastal
research community whereas the term “waterline” is
used in water transportation, and “coastline” is mainly
adopted by the remote sensing community. Given the
dynamic nature of idealized boundaries, various
coastline indicators have been utilized in coastal stu­
dies. Therefore, the term “coastline” is used synony­
mously in this review article.
From the perspective of industry management and
data acquisition, the coastline is divided into three
categories in this study: instantaneous coastline, cor­
rected coastline, and probabilistic coastline. The
instantaneous coastline refers to the boundary

Figure 1. Definitions and locations of a coastline in different research fields and applications.
between ocean and land at the moment of remote
sensing imaging. It is usually instantaneous, and it
changes with the tidal heights when imaging. The
corrected coastline is obtained using a digital eleva­
tion model (DEM) and tide data on the basis of the
instantaneous coastline, and can also be corrected for
the effects of coastal processes. The corrected coast­
line is very stable and the MHHW, the mean low water
surface of spring tides (MLLW), and 0 m mean high
waterline can be determined according to its stability.
A probabilistic coastline is a coastline predicted by
a mathematical model based on a comprehensive
understanding of the spatial position of the coastline
and its changing rules. The probabilistic coastline is
important in the analysis of coastal spatial resource
evolution under the influence of global climate
change and human activities.
3. Coastline products and performance
evaluation
3.1. Coastline products
A benchmark product not only helps evaluating and
verifying the performance of coastline extraction
algorithms, but also performs a key role in the promo­
tion of coastline research (Zhu et al. 2022). In recent
decades, several coastline products (Table 1) have
been published, and are used for coastal aquatic,
ocean remote sensing, coastal zone management,
coastal zone ecosystems and coastal geomorphology
(Chen et al. 2023, 2023; Gens 2010; Li et al. 2023; Liang
et al. 2023; Mahdavi et al. 2018).
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 3
The earliest global coastline products can be
traced back to 1990 (Soluri and Woodson 1990).
In 1992, the United States, Canada, Australia, and
the British Navy collaborated to publish
a 1:1,000,000 scale digital map of the world
(Digital Chart of the World, DCW), and the US
Geological Survey converted it into an online
ArcInfo vector data in 1994 (Digital Chart of the
World, 1992; Liu et al. 2019). The Environmental
System Research Institute, Inc. of the United State
(ESRI) also published the ESRI version of global
coastline and island data. In order to understand
global changes, the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and several
other research institutes obtained openly accessi­
ble global coastline data. The global coastline data
were published in 1996 based on combining the
WVS (World Vector Shoreline with working scale
approximately 1:100,000) and WDB (World Data
Base II with working scale approximately
1:3,000,000) databases (Wessel and Smith 1996).
These data have been continuously updated dur­
ing the past three decades, and the most updated
version, 2.3.7 has been available since
15 June 2017 (Wessel and Smith 2017). A new
30-m spatial resolution global shoreline vector
(GSV) was developed from annual composites of
2014 Landsat satellite imagery. Polygon topology
was applied to the GSV, resulting in a new char­
acterization of the number and size of global
islands, and three size classes of islands were
mapped: continental mainlands (5), islands greater
than 1 km2 (21,818), and islands smaller than 1 km2
4 W. SUN ET AL.

Table 1. Comparison of the coastline production.

Name
WDB II (World Data Base II)
WVS (World Vector
Shoreline)
DCW (Digital Chart of the
World)
GSHHS (Global Self-
consistent, Hierarchical,
High-resolution
Geography Database)
GSV (Global shoreline
vector)
GMSSD_2015 (global
multiple scale
shorelines dataset)
Coastline of Southeast
Asian islands
Coastline of Antarctic
Coastline of the United
States
Coastline of Australia
Coastline of China
Year Study area Spatial resolution/scale Affiliation References
1977 Global Approximately 1:3,000,000 CIA (Central Intelligence (Central Intelligence
Agency), USA Agency 1977)
1990 Approximately 1:250,000 DMA (Defense Mapping (Defense Mapping
Agency), USA Agency 1988;
Soluri and
Woodson 1990)
1992 Approximately 1:1,000,000 ESRI (Environmental (Digital Chart of the
Systems Research World, 1992)
Institute), USA
1996 (first Approximately 100 m University of Hawai‘i, USA (Wessel and Smith
version), 1996 and 2017)
2017
(version
2.3.7)
2018 Approximately 30 m U.S. Geological Survey, (Sayre et al. 2019)
USA
2019 Approximately 1 m CAS (Chinese Academy of (Liu et al. 2019)
Sciences), China
2000, 2015 Southeast Approximately 30 m CAS (Chinese Academy of (Zhang and Hou
Asian Sciences), China 2020)
islands
2005, 2010, Antarctic Approximately 30–75 m Beijing Normal University, (Yu et al. 2019)
2017 China
1930–1940 the United The 1939–40 measurements were determined NOAA (National Oceanic (Ankrah, Monteiro,
and 1970 States with a recording instrument on the largest- and Atmospheric and Madureira
scale charts and maps available at that time. Administration), USA 2022; Gens 2010)
For the Great Lakes, shoreline lengths were
measured in 1970 by the International
Coordinating Committee on Great Lakes Basic
Hydraulic and Hydrologic Data.
2003 Approximately 1:70,000 NOAA, USA (Graham, Sault, and
Bailey 2003)
2003 The product accuracy is consistent with Shuttle NOAA, USA (NASA/NGA 2003)
Radar Topography Mission Water Body Data,
Approximately 30 m.
1988–2019 Australia Approximately 30 m National Earth and Marine (Bishop-Taylor et al.
Observations Branch, 2021)
Geoscience Australia,
Australia
1940, 1960, China Topographic map with scale 1:250,000, 1:100,000, CAS (Chinese Academy of (Hou et al. 2016)
1990, 2000, 1:50,000, remote sensing images with Sciences), China
2010, 2014 30 m spatial resolution
1991–2015 Approximately 30 m Tsinghua University, (Xu and Gong 2018)
China
1975, 1990, Approximately 30 m Beijing Normal University, (Wang et al. 2019b)
2000, 2010, China
2015

(318,868) (Sayre et al. 2019). Since the advent of
Google Earth, the academic community has put
forward an agenda to improve the spatial resolu­
tion of the global island and coastline data from
high resolution satellite images. A high-resolution
global coastline and island (isles, rocks) product
with a background based on open Google Earth
images for 2015 showed that the total area of the
world of the global continental mainland is
137,126,029.55 km2, the total area of global islands
(isles, rocks) is 10,367,433.22 km2, the global con­
tinental mainland coastlines are 734,739.56 km
long, and those of islands are 1766,013.29 km
long (Liu et al. 2019).
China’s “blue land” covers 3 million km2. The total
coastlines measure 32,000 km, with the mainland
coastline spanning 18,000 km and with the island
coastline measuring 14,000 km (Hou et al. 2016; Wu,
Hou, and Xu 2014). China’s coastal zones are one of
the fastest developing and most economically
dynamic regions in the world. Since the 1950s, the
coastline of mainland China has undergone drastic
changes and has been continuously and significantly
enhanced (Wang, Hou, and Wang 2017; Xu and Gong
2018). Based on multi-temporal topographic maps,
remote sensing images and field surveys covering
the entire coastal zone of mainland China, the coast­
lines of six periods since the early 1940s were
Table 2. Comparison of the coastline extraction methods using remote sensing technology.
Type Technique/method/model Theories Data source Pros Cons Accuracy References
Instantaneous Segmentation-based methods Image segmentation is used to Aerial ● Good spatial ● Hard to be syn­ Dependent on (Bishop-Taylor et al. 2021; Buono et al.
coastline (region growth, snake model, distinguish land and sea based on photography, resolution chronized with the spatial 2014; de Vries et al. 2021; Dewi et al.
edge detector, OTSU, Segnet, the spectral differences between optical satellite ● Rapid and tidal conditions resolution of 2016; Kanwal et al. 2019; Kelly and
DeepUnet, histogram ground objects. imagery, SAR large-extent ● Methods/mod­ remote Gontz 2018; Li and Damen 2010; Li
segmentation) imagery, mapping els not neces­ sensing and Niu 2022; Li et al. 2018; Meng
Classification-based methods The boundary between sea and land Airborne LIDAR ● In expensive sarily applic­ imagery et al. 2020; Pradhan, Rizeei, and
(decision tree classification, area is considered as a coastline ● Regularly able to Abdulle 2018; Sheng et al. 2012;
unsupervised/supervised according to the target updatable complex coast­ Wang, Zhang, and Ma 2010; Wu, Liu,
classification, object-oriented characteristics. ● Can recognize line structures and Wu 2017; Yasir et al. 2020;
classification) the attributes Zhang 2011b; Zhang et al. 2013,
Hybrid methods (Object-based Combine the advantages of various of the 2021)
region growth integrated edge technologies and methods to coastline
detection method, multiple accurately distinguish land and sea.
segmentation methods, edge
detection and supervised
classification method, OMI-
based method)
Corrected Tidal correction-based method Obtained by calculating the horizontal Tidal data, DEM ● Synchronize ● Inconsistencies Dependent on (Liu et al. 2013; Ghosh, Kumar, and Roy
coastline distance between the waterline at with tidal in tidal datum the tidal 2015; Meng et al. 2019; Nandi et al.
different satellite imaging moments conditions caused regional model and 2016; Zhao et al. 2017)
and the waterline at the MHWS ● Clear mean­ limitation DEM
tides using the tidal datum and ing (coastal
multi-temporal remote sensing management)
images.
Combined method of tide model Obtained by calculating the horizontal
and DEM distance between the waterline at
the satellite imaging moment and
the waterline at the MHWS tides
using tidal data and DEM.
Probabilistic Probabilistic model Based on the criterion, the trend of the Land use/cover ● Be beneficial ● Limited preci­ Dependent on (Amani et al. 2020; Dastgheib et al.
coastline coastline is predicted using the change to historical sion and the 2022; Kroon et al. 2020)
probabilistic model. product, research accuracy probabilistic
socioeconomic ● Be beneficial model and
data, sea level to under­ auxiliary
height data, stand erosion data
meteorological/ and expan­
climatic data sion in future
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING
5
6 W. SUN ET AL.
extracted and analyzed in terms of their structure,
fractals, change rates, land-sea patterns, and bay
areas (Hou et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2019b; Wang,
Hou, and Wang 2017; Xu and Gong 2018; Wang,
Yan, and Su 2021). The results obtained by the visual
interpretation-based method showed that the length
of the coastline changed from 18.10 × 103 km in the
1940s to 19.70 × 103 km in 2014, an increase of 8.84%
(Hou et al. 2016). The extraction of the instantaneous
coastline using a modified normalized water index
based on Landsat data from 1975 to 2015, found
that the overall length is 17,364.90 km in 2015,
which is 8.90% longer than 1975 (Wang et al. 2019a,
2019b, 2021). In addition, many researchers pay atten­
tion to the coastline changes in key areas, such as
bays (Cai et al. 2022; Fan et al. 2023; Li and Damen
2010), big cities (Hu et al. 2021; Liu et al. 2018), start­
ing point of the Belt and Road Initiative (Duan et al.
2021), archipelago (Chen et al. 2022), these results can
contribute to the control and prevention of environ­
mental pollution, optimization of resource configura­
tion and sustainable socio-economic development of
coastal zones.
The coastal zone is the center of the world’s eco­
nomic activities and the main site of development
and construction for all countries (Gens 2010; Hou
et al. 2016). The coastline, as one of the important
elements of the coastal zone, contains rich marine
resources and environmental information while divid­
ing the sea from the land, and it is necessary to
monitor coastline changes to achieve the sustainable
development of coastal zone resources (Li et al. 2023).
The coastline products of the United States of
America (USA), Australia and other countries were
acquired by remote sensing images (Bishop-Taylor
et al. 2021, Zhang and Hou, 2020; Gens 2010; Zhang
and Hou 2020). For the USA, a number of federal
projects distribute coastlines in digital format since
2003 using airborne LiDAR, coastal airborne spectro­
graphic imager (CASI), data acquired for the Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and the “Digital
Coast” project is a Federal-State local partnership to
develop an information framework for addressing
coastal and ocean issues since 2007 (Ankrah,
Monteiro, and Madureira 2022; Gens 2010). For
Australia, Bishop-Taylor et al. combined sub-pixel
waterline extraction with a new pixel-based tidal
modeling method to seamlessly map almost
2 million km of tide-datum coastline along the entire
Australian coast from 1988 to 2019, present a new
continental dataset documenting three decades of
coastal change across Australia (Bishop-Taylor et al.
2021). Zhang and Hou extracted and assessed coast­
line changes on Southeast Asian islands overall dur­
ing 2000–2015 based on Landsat remote sensing
images, and found that the coastline length increased
by 532 km from 2000 (148,508 km) to 2015 (149,040
km), natural coastlines decreased by 2503 km, while
artificial coastlines increased by 3035 km (Zhang and
Hou 2020).
3.2. Evaluation criterion
Accuracy assessments evaluate the performance of
coastline extraction algorithms and analyze the accu­
racy of the results. Accuracy assessment is carried out
by qualitative and quantitative evaluation.
A qualitative evaluation is the assessment of an
image through visual analysis with the support of
feature knowledge; a quantitative evaluation is the
assessment of an image using accuracy indices.
A qualitative evaluation is conducted mainly on two
factors: location and shape. In terms of positional
accuracy, producer’s accuracy (PA), user’s accuracy
(UA), and overall accuracy (OA) are calculated based
on the extraction and reference results. It should be
noted that since the coastline is a linear element, it is
necessary to establish a buffer zone with 1 or 2 times
the spatial resolution of the remote sensing image as
the radius before positional accuracy evaluation. For
non-positional accuracy, the root mean square error
(RMSE) of the lengths of the coastline in the resulting
images is calculated and compared with the length of
the reference coastline.
3.2.1. Producer’s accuracy (PA)
PA refers to the proportion of correctly identified
coastlines in the total number of reference pixels
and is calculated as:
0
O \O
PA ¼ ; (1)
O
where PA refers to producer’s accuracy and O’ and
O are the extracted results and reference data
(usually, benchmark product or visual interpretation
results), respectively. The OE (errors of omission)
refers to the reference sites omitted from the

corrected class in the classified map that can be cal­
culated according to formula 1-PA using PA.
3.2.2. User’s accuracy (UA)
UA refers to the proportion of correctly identified
coastlines in the total number of pixels of the extrac­
tion result:
0 uN ðyi yi Þ
O \O
UA ¼ ; (2)
O0
The CE (errors of commission) refers to the refer­
ence sites that were misclassified from the correct
class in the classified map that can be calculated
according to formula 1-UA using UA.
3.2.3. Overall accuracy (OA)
Overall accuracy is the probability that an indivi­
dual will be correctly classified by a test; that is,
the sum of the true positives plus true negatives
divided by the total number of individuals tested
(Chen et al. 2019; Hou et al. 2022). The equation is
as follows:
TP þ TN
OA ¼ ; (3)
TP þ TN þ FP þ FN
where TP is the number of pixels that are the
coastline in reference data and the coastline in
extracted results, FP is the number of pixels that
are the non-coastline in reference data and the
coastline in extracted results, TN is the number of
pixels that are the non-coastline in reference data
and the non-coastline in extracted results, FN is
the number of pixels that are the coastline in
reference data and the non-coastline in extracted
results.
3.2.4. Root mean square error (RMSE) and relative
RMSE
The root mean square error (RMSE) is a popular metric
used in machine learning and statistics to measure
the accuracy of a predictive model (Chen et al. 2022;
Cho et al. 2020; Sun et al. 2021). Relative root mean
squared error (rRMSE) is a variation of the RMSE that
helps evaluate the accuracy of a predictive model
relative to the range of the target variable (Han et al.
2023). RMSE and rRMSE provide a clear understanding
of the model’s performance, with lower values indi­
cating better predictive accuracy (Kim et al. 2021; Shin
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 7
et al. 2020). The equation of RMSE and rMSE are as
follows (Han et al. 2023):
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u N
u1 X ^ 2
RMSE ¼ t ðyi yi Þ ; (4)
N i¼1
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u N
u1 P ^ 2
u i¼1 RMSE
rRMSEð%Þ ¼ u
u P � 100 ¼ � 100;
t N ^ 2
y
ðyi Þ
i¼1
(5)
^
where yi and yi are the length of reference data and
extracted results in ith section, respectively, y is the
mean value of extracted results, and N is the number
of samples.
4. Data sources and methods
4.1. Data sources
A variety of data sources are available to examine the
position and attributes of coastlines, and the choice of
what data to use at a specific site is generally deter­
mined by data availability (Boak and Turner 2005).
Historical land-based photographs, coastal maps and
charts, which provide general background informa­
tion, have become important data sources of coast­
line extraction. However, the limited information
available on scale or ground control points limit
their application to the quantitative mapping of
coastlines. Over the last decade, remote sensing
images have been the main data sources for large-
scale coastline extraction, increasing the timeliness
and reducing the cost of the assessments.
Several remote sensing data sources are commonly
used to detect and monitor coastlines, including opti­
cal images, SAR (synthetic aperture radar) images and
airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging).
Medium-resolution optical images have been widely
available since the launch of the Landsat satellite in
1972. Recently, a number of commercial optical satel­
lites with high spatial resolution such as IKONOS
(Hamylton and East 2012), Quickbird (Ford 2013),
RapidEye (Duarte et al. 2018), GeoEye (Dai et al.
2019), WorldView (Smith et al. 2021) and Gaofen-2
(Liang et al. 2021). The spectral continuity of optical
images has the advantage of providing detailed
8 W. SUN ET AL.
spectral information to accurately distinguish surface
objects with different characteristics. Optical images
with high spatial resolution and suitable spectral char­
acteristics can not only determine the position of
coastlines, but also accurately identify their attributes.
With the launch of the Seasat satellite in 1978, space­
borne SAR images became an option for coastline
extraction, and Radarsat, ERS, Envisat, ALOS, and
Gaofen-3 have provided good application results.
The SAR signal echo depends heavily on the rough­
ness of the imaged ground objects and a continuous
coastline can be found with an edge-tracing algo­
rithm. Compared to optical remote sensing images,
SAR images can overcome adverse meteorological
conditions, but their quality is affected by geometric
distortion and speckle noise, making image interpre­
tation more challenging. LiDAR is an airborne laser
ranging technique that collects highly accurate point
measurements along a dense profile (Brock et al.
2002). The coastlines derived from LiDAR data are
referenced to the statistically established tidal datum
surface. Therefore, LiDAR help overcome the pro­
blems associated with identifying coastlines with the
use of wet/dry beach lines on aerial photographs.
LiDAR data also provide detailed information about
near-shore bathymetry and beach topography over
a broad region. The cross-shore profile method fits
LiDAR points along foreshore profiles, and water
levels are intersected with the regression line to iden­
tify the coastline, and the points from profiles are then
linked to represent a coastline (Fabris 2021; Morton,
Miller, and Moore 2005; Gens 2010). Alternatively, the
contouring method subtracts the desired tidal datum
from the DEM generated by LiDAR data and values of
zero are obtained for the water line, and these are
contoured to derive the tidally referenced coastline
(Robertson et al. 2004; Gens 2012).
4.2. Methods
Depending on the specific platform used, derived
coastlines may be based on the use of visually
discernible coastal features, digital image-
processing analysis, or a specified tidal datum.
Therefore, the methods can be divided into three
categories: methods for instantaneous coastline,
methods for corrected coastline, and methods for
the probabilistic coastline. In principle, the
different types of coastlines are obtained by differ­
ent techniques/methods/models, and the accuracy
of the coastline extraction depends on the spatial
resolution of the data source. A comparison of the
coastline extraction methods using remote sensing
technology is described in Table 2, according to
the research topic, technique/method/model, the­
ories, data source, pros, cons, and accuracy.
4.2.1. Instantaneous coastline
Early coastline extraction efforts mainly involved
photogrammetric methods, including visual interpre­
tation (BaMasoud and Byrne 2011; Bini, Casarosa, and
Luppichini 2021; Duarte et al. 2018; Hereher 2015;
Jayakumar and Malarvannan 2016; Meyer, Matzke,
and Williams 2015; Murali et al. 2015; Qiu et al. 2021;
Suo and Zhang 2015; Xu, Gao, and Ning 2016; Zhang
2011a; Zhang and Hou 2020) and GPS survey (Moussa
et al. 2019; Saranathan et al. 2011; Virdis, Oggiano,
and Disperati 2012). However, the accurate visual
interpretation of coastlines requires advanced exper­
tise, and the process is time-consuming and labor-
intensive. With the development of remote sensing
technology, the available datasets include aerial
photos and multi-source satellite remote sensing
data from Landsat (Mondal et al. 2020), SPOT (El-
Asmar and Hereher 2011), and other satellite imagery.
For example, in Billa and Pradhan (2011), a Lee Sigma
filter and a Sobel and linear edge detector were
applied to SAR data for edge enhancement. Then,
the shoreline was obtained through threshold seg­
mentation. As the SAR imaging of coastal areas is
affected by waves, some researchers have discussed
the influence of wave growth on coastline extraction
from SAR images (Sletten and Hwang 2011), and their
results indicate that the detected waterline position is
the sensitive function of radar frequency. Shore-based
LiDAR has also been used in shoreline studies using
geometric data such as instantaneous slope depths to
extract shorelines (Xhardé, Long, and Forbes 2011, Liu
et al. 2013; Abessolo Ondoa et al. 2016; Bracs et al.
2016; Al-Nasrawi, Hamylton, and Jones 2018; Lin et al.
2019; Ribas et al. 2020).
4.2.1.1. Segmentation-based methods. Image seg­
mentation divides an image into several distinct areas
according to image characteristics, such as grayscale,
color information, spatial texture, and geometric

shapes. These features should have maximum consis­
tency or similarity in the same area while having
obvious differences between different areas.
Segmentation-based methods for coastline extraction
can be categorized into 1) threshold-based meth­
ods, 2) edge detection-based methods, and 3) region-
based methods.
4.2.1.1.1. Threshold-based methods. In threshold-
based methods, a threshold for a specific image feature
(including but not limited to gray value) is set, and the
pixels are divided into different categories (usually water
and land in coastline extraction research) by comparing
them with the threshold. Therefore, feature and thresh­
old selection represents a key process in threshold-based
methods for image segmentation. Classic threshold seg­
mentation methods include the maximum between-
class variance method (OTSU), maximum entropy
method, minimum error method, and cross-entropy
method. Histogram-based threshold selection is another
method (Chen et al. 2019; Sheng et al. 2012; Zhang
2011b). The valley point (Raju and Neelima 2012)
between the dual peaks of an image gray histogram
can be used as a segmentation threshold, and the
image can then be binarized to extract the coastline.
Kelly and Gontz (2018) calculated seven types of spectral
indices and adopted the OTSU algorithm to determine
the threshold of water and land separation. Objects on
the surface of the Earth have characteristic spectral sig­
natures due to their physical properties and their inter­
actions with electromagnetic radiation, spectral indices
derived from multispectral remote sensing products
give some insights into different surface processes,
such as the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI)
(Buono et al. 2014; Li et al. 2018), Modified Normalized
Difference Water Index (MNDWI) (Dewi et al. 2016;
Kanwal et al. 2019; Karsli, Guneroglu, and Dihkan 2011;
Pradhan, Rizeei, and Abdulle 2018; Wang, Zhang, and Ma
2010; Wu, Liu, and Wu 2017), Difference Vegetation
Index (DVI) (Cenci et al. 2013; Murray et al. 2012), and
tasseled cap transformation (Cenci et al. 2013; Chen et al.
2019; Zollini et al. 2019). Therefore, on the basis of calcu­
lating the spectral indices, image segmentation can be
performed using different thresholds (determined by
the OTSU algorithm or directly set to 0) to obtain
a binary image and convert it into a vector file to com­
plete the coastline extraction (Viaña-Borja and Ortega-
Sánchez 2019).
4.2.1.1.2. Edge detection-based methods. Edge
detection-based segmentation is a method for
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 9
finding the edge pixels of water and land in an
image where the pixel value change rate is the largest
and is expressed by a derivative (gradient, Ñf )
(Dharampal 2015). The edge can be specified with
an edge detector or energy function-based method
as following equations (Dharampal 2015; Ziou and
Tabbone 1998). The equation is shown as following:
� �
@f @f
Ñf ¼ ; (6)
@x @y
@f @f
θðx; yÞ ¼ tan 1 ð = Þ (7)
@x @y
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
@f 2 @f 2
Mðx; yÞ ¼ ð Þ þ ð Þ (8)
@x @y
where Ñf represents the direction of the maximum
@f @f
rate of change of f at position (x, y), @x and @y are the
derivatives in the X-axis and Y-axis, respectively, M(x,
y) and θðx; yÞ are the value and angle of the gradient
Ñf , respectively.
Edge detectors
Filter templates are used to calculate the partial
derivatives of gradients and are typically called edge
detectors. The Sobel detector (Yu et al. 2019), linear
detector (Billa and Pradhan 2011), and instantaneous
coefficient of variation are common first-order differ­
ential operators while the Canny detector (Cenci et al.
2013; Liu and Jezek 2004) is a second-order differen­
tial operator. dx and dy are the common templates of
the Sobel detector for horizontal and vertical edge
detection, respectively.
2 3 2 3
1 0 1 1 2 1
dx ¼ 4 2 0 2 5dy ¼ 4 0 0 0 5 (9)
1 0 1 1 2 1
In addition, threshold-based segmentation is
always combined with edge detection to provide
a binary image for convenient edge determination
(de Vries et al. 2021). In existing research,
a threshold is selected on the basis of the global
threshold constant false alarm rate (Bayram et al.
2013; Yu et al. 2019), histogram (Sheng et al. 2012),
and adaptive threshold selection methods. For
example, the software e-Cognition (Zhang et al.
2013) and FIT-COAST (Liu et al. 2020) provide
object-oriented multiscale segmentation methods
and mainly use the spatial geometric features of
10 W. SUN ET AL.
images (Kass, Witkin, and Terzopoulos 1988; Zhang
et al. 2015).
Energy function-based algorithms
In coastline extraction research, energy function-
based methods mainly refer to an active contour
model and the developed algorithms based on such
a model. The basic idea is to use a continuous curve to
depict a target edge (such as a coastline) and make
the curve gradually approach the actual target
boundary under the guidance of the decreasing
energy of a predefined energy function. The position
of the curve at which the energy reaches the mini­
mum is where the target contour is. These methods
could be categorized into the parametric active con­
tour model and geometric active contour model
according to the different forms of the curves. In the
parametric active contour model, the curve is repre­
sented by multiple parameters; the snake model
(Caselles, Kimmel, and Sapiro 1997) and geodesic
active contours (Alonso et al. 2010) are typical exam­
ples (Xu and Prince 1997).
Specifically, the snake model could not extract the
position information of a concave edge, whereas the
gradient vector flow (GVF) (Osher and Sethian 1988) is
able to solve it. However, the iteration of the evolu­
tion equation of the GVF-based snake model depends
on the performance of the edge detection operator
and is unstable in some local areas. Hence, Sheng
et al. (2012) proposed a controllable GVF for coastline
extraction. The disadvantage of the parametric active
contour model is that it is difficult to use when deal­
ing with changes in curve topology, such as the mer­
ging or splitting of curves. Thus, a geometric active
contour model (Silveira and Heleno 2009) with a level
set function was proposed and has been successfully
employed in shoreline extraction (Ouyang, Chong,
and Wu 2010; Shu, Li, and Gomes 2010). Given its
heavy computational burden, threshold-based coarse
segmentation is first conducted, and a narrowband
level set method is used to refine the results and
thereby speed up coastline extraction (Modava and
Akbarizadeh 2017). However, for areas with uneven
pixel grayscale, the extraction effect is poor. To
increase the calculation speed, a study proposed the
changeable moving step method based on the level
set algorithm and the resolution depressed method
based on the level set algorithm for finding the vari­
able moving step square (Kuleli 2010). In Crawford
et al. (2020), a coastline extraction method using
spatial fuzzy clustering and level sets was proposed,
and the results indicated the method’s capability of
achieving a precise positioning of coastlines on full-
resolution images and avoiding mapping errors.
Region-based methods
The principle of region-based methods is to divide
an image into different regions according to similarity
criteria. That is, pixels that possess similar attributes
are grouped into unique regions. The regional growth
method starts with a group of seed pixels represent­
ing different areas and then gradually merges similar
pixels around the seed to expand the area until mer­
ging pixels under predefined criteria or a stopping
growth threshold is no longer possible. The similarity
in region-based methods is usually measured in terms
of gray-level intensity, variance, color, and multispec­
tral features, Zhang (2011b) calculated the spectral
Euclidean distance and then used the regional growth
method to obtain the coastline in particular (Zhang
et al. 2013).
4.2.1.2. Classification-based methods. Water fea­
tures appear darker due to the strong absorption by
the particular wavelength, and coastline positions can
be mapped using classification-based methods
(Hereher 2011; Sekar, Kankara, and Kalaivanan 2022;
Zhang 2011b). Classification-based methods involve
assigning different labels according to target charac­
teristics and considering the boundary between sea
and land area as a coastline, according to classifica­
tion unit, which can be divided into two categories:
pixel-based classification methods and object-
oriented classification methods (Baselice and
Ferraioli 2013; Gašparović and Jogun 2018;
Ghassemian 2016).
Pixel-based classification methods
Pixel-based classification methods widely used
methods that classify pixels into distinct categories
based solely on the spectral and ancillary information
within that pixel (Aly et al. 2012; Amani et al. 2020;
Dervisoglu, Bilgilioğlu, and Yağmur 2020). With the
advantages of simple operation, pixel-based classifi­
cation methods is widely used in many fields includ­
ing coastline extraction (Maiti and Bhattacharya
2011). Alesheikh, Ghorbanali, and Nouri (2007) built
classification rules on the basis of spectral informa­
tion, texture information, and other necessary

statistical information of selected samples to separate
sea and land, thereby achieving the purpose of
extracting coastlines. In Dong et al. (2016), the coast­
line was extracted based on the classification of water
and land by the maximum likelihood classifier using
all bands of the Landsat satellite series (MSS, TM, ETM
+), except for the thermal band, and further, the ero­
sion and accretion on the coast of Cape Rosetta in
Egypt from 1973 to 2008 were studied. In Du et al.
(2016), the unsupervised fuzzy c-means classification
(FCM) was proposed for coastline extraction, and the
effect of the gradual transition between water and
land was eliminated. Su and Gibeaut (2017) used
hyperspectral data obtained by an unmanned aerial
vehicle to compare the effects of ISODATA and three
other supervised classification methods (i.e. maxi­
mum likelihood classification, random forest, and
SVM) with texture and color information on coastline
extraction. Cao et al. (2020) and Zimmerman et al.
(2020) applied the Iterative Self-Organizing Data
Analysis Technique (ISODATA) to classify water and
non-water, and the boundary between the two
groups was regarded as the coastline.
Pixel-based classification methods uses many clas­
sifiers, such as minimum distance classifier, maximum
likelihood classifier, K-nearest neighbor classifier,
K-means classifier, ISODATA classifier and SVM classi­
fier etc., which have been successful in different fields
or application scenarios (Lee et al. 2023; Li et al. 2022;
Macarringue, Bolfe, and Pereira 2022; Yoo et al. 2019).
However, it is well known that as arbitrary objects,
pixels do not necessarily represent the pure land­
scape that is being characterized. In the absence of
contextualization, pixel-based classification results
tend to contain significant noise as no neighborhood
information is being considered, which will result in
false information appearing in the classification
results, and thus reduce the accuracy of coastline
extraction (Chen et al. 2019, 2022; Fisher 1997).
Moreover, both the landscape structure and the resol­
ving power of the sensor contribute to our ability to
identify and map objects of interest in a map, but the
presence of mixed pixels will affect the judgment of
coastline position.
Object-oriented classification methods
Unlike pixel-based classification methods,
object-oriented classification technology sets adja­
cent pixels as objects to identify interested spectral
elements, and makes full use of spatial, texture and
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 11
spectral information of high-resolution panchro­
matic and multi-spectral data to segment and clas­
sify, and outputs high-precision classification
results or vectors (Kass, Witkin, and Terzopoulos
1988; Kotaridis and Lazaridou 2021). The object
has more features than a pixel, and these features
include color, size, shape, direction, proximity, and
scale topology relations, which help to distinguish
different types of feature more accurately. For
object-oriented classification methods, the study
area of remote sensing data is divided into multi­
ple scales, and the optimal segmentation scale of
objects in the study area is selected based on the
result of multiple scales, the objects containing
coastline is classified, and the coastline is extracted
by vectorization or edge detection. In the previous
study, many scholars used object-oriented classifi­
cation methods to obtain coastlines, such as sup­
port vector machine (SVM) algorithm with a radial
kernel, a rule-based object-oriented classification
method (Liu et al. 2020; Pradhan, Rizeei, and
Abdulle 2018).
Object-oriented classification generally includes
segmentation, feature extraction, image classifica­
tion, and accuracy evaluation (Aly et al. 2012). For
coastline extraction using object-oriented classifica­
tion methods, on the one hand, different objects
have different scales in images, so it is difficult for
a single segmentation scale to take into account
both the macroscopic and microscopic features of
images, and it is necessary to fully describe and
express different types of ground objects at differ­
ent scales. On the other hand, each object has the
same or similar internal features, including spec­
trum, space, texture and shape, etc., it is difficult to
determine the rules for accurately distinguishing
particular objects.
4.2.1.3. Hybrid methods. Some studies combined
methods to extract coastlines (threshold method,
edge detection, or classification) (Cenci et al. 2013;
de Vries et al. 2021; Kass, Witkin, and Terzopoulos
1988; Liu et al. 2020; Meng et al. 2020; Yu et al.
2019). For example, the SVM algorithm has been
adopted to classify coastline pixels, and the object-
based region growth integrated edge detection
method was proposed to automatically extract coast­
lines (Zhang et al. 2013). More specifically, the
eCognition software was used to conduct multiscale
12 W. SUN ET AL.
segmentation, and then a Canny edge detector was
used to identify the edge pixels in the near-infrared
band (the edges of the inland land and water were
sharp). Thereafter, the ocean was identified using the
area growth method with a new feature called the
object merger index. Postprocessing was previously
employed to delete unnecessary objects (lakes, ships,
etc.) and optimize the coastline. In the work of de
Vries et al. (2021), Landsat top-of-atmosphere reflec­
tance data were used to calculate the NDWI, NDVI,
and thermal infra-red. A Canny edge detector was
used to distinguish vegetation, intertidal zones,
water bodies, and subtidal silt. Then, the Otsu algo­
rithm was implemented to automatically determine
the threshold to achieve the separation of vegetation.
The thermal infra-red threshold was employed to dis­
tinguish the water body from the intertidal zone. After
obtaining several pure pixels of vegetation, water,
and intertidal zone, linear spectral unmixing was per­
formed to obtain the ratio of water, vegetation, and
silt for each pixel and thereby achieve the boundary
of subtidal mud banks. The linear spectral unmixing
method assumes that the reflectance of each pixel is
a linear combination of different objectives with dif­
ferent weight coefficients according to the proportion
of the area occupied by each of them (Sun and Du
2019; Sun et al. 2020).
4.2.2. Corrected coastline
Either on the basis of visual interpretation and auto­
matic interpretation technology, remote sensing
images provide the instantaneous water boundary
at the moment of sensor imaging. Many scholars
have developed technologies to correct the coast­
lines to suit management applications (Liu et al.
2013; Zhao et al. 2017). For example, the remote
sensing image at the time of the MHWS tides can
be selected to extract water boundaries, but the
process is difficult because of the regional differ­
ences in sea water movement processes (Nandi
et al. 2016). In some cases, the tidal level value at
the time of remote sensing imaging was identified,
and then the slope relationship of the beach surface
implied in the DEM and LiDAR was used (Ghosh,
Kumar, and Roy 2015; Meng et al. 2019). The water­
line position in remote sensing imaging can be
calculated relative to the mean high water spring
tide surface. The coastline correction methods can
be divided into two categories: the tidal correction-
based method and the combined tide model and
DEM method.
4.2.2.1. Tidal correction-based method. The tidal
correction-based method uses the tidal model and
instantaneous waterline for coastline correction.
First, the mid-perpendicular line of the instantaneous
waterline is drawn to obtain a segmentation line, and
the slope is calculated using the plane coordinates
and height from the tidal datum plane. Second, the
point position on the mid-perpendicular line at the
MHWS tides can be calculated. Finally, connecting the
points calculated on each mid-perpendicular line
reveals the coastline at the MHWS tides. The diagram
of the tide correction-based method is shown in
Figure 2.
At the MHWS tides, the plane coordinates of
a point at the mid-perpendicular line can be calcu­
lated by the following equation:
(
X ¼ hHT1 hhT1T2 ðxT2 xT1 Þ þ xT2
(10)
Y ¼ hHT1 hhT1T2 ðyT2 yT1 Þ þ yT2
where X and Y are the coordinates of mean high
water line, xT1, yT1 and xT2, yT2 are the coordinates of
the intersection of the instantaneous waterline at
times T1 and T2 and the mid-perpendicular line. hT1
and hT2 are the tidal levels at T1 and T2, respectively,
H is the tidal level of the corrected coastline.
4.2.2.2. Combined method of tide model and
DEM. Given the influence of tides, the horizontal
distance from the waterline to the “coastline” is cal­
culated according to the tidal height at the satellite
imaging moment and the tidal height at the MHWS
tides. The result is combined with the DEM data of the
study area, and the corrected coastline (for the MHWS
tides) is obtained.
The diagram of the combined tide and DEM
method is shown in Figure 3.
Querying the tide survey data reveals that the
satellite transit time and the mean high tide heights
of the two remote sensing data are h1, h2, and H,
respectively, where h2 > h1. Then, the correction dis­
tance L (relative to the waterline C2) of the coastline
can be calculated by Equation (11).
8
<L ¼ ðH h2 Þ=
h tgθ i
(11)
: θ ¼ arctg ðh2 h1 Þ=L

Figure 2. Diagram of the tidal correction-based method.
where θ is the slope of the tidal flat, which can be
calculated by the regional DEM.
For the corrected coastline obtained using the
combined tide model and DEM method, the collected
measured tidal level data should be used as input to
the T-Tide Tidal Harmonic Analysis Toolkit (https://
www.eoas.ubc.ca/~rich/) to obtain the tidal harmonic
constants of different tidal sections (Pawlowicz,
Beardsley, and Lentz 2002). Given the regional char­
acteristics and spatial transformation differences of
tidal levels, the main tidal sections in the study area
are screened out. According to the tidal harmonic
constants of the selected subtides, the tidal level
values of the satellite imaging time and the mean
high tide time are calculated on the basis of the
mean sea level. Therefore, a key problem is to obtain
accurate tidal harmonic constants while considering
the density of measured tidal stations and the regio­
nal applicability of the tidal model.
Coastline corrections are mainly aimed at flat ter­
rain areas and require high-precision, centimeter-
level, DEM data to obtain slope information.
Therefore, the acquisition of centimeter-level DEM
data is another key problem in the realization of
coastline tide correction.
4.2.3. Probabilistic coastlines
Probabilistic coastlines are a special type of coastline
developed on the basis of waterlines. When the
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 13
remote sensing image acquisition time varies, the
coastlines extracted from various images, even those
from the same area, are different. The land and water
areas are divided according to a certain method for
each scene image, and the probability of whether
each pixel is a water area or land is determined. This
method requires multiple consecutive observations of
the same area.
Similarly to the waterline extraction process,
a spectral index is widely adopted to distinguish water
and land because of its practical features. For example,
the NDWI was calculated from high spatial resolution
remote sensing satellite datasets (Quickbird, WorldView-
2, and WorldView-3) and then masked with an adopted
threshold method to extract the coastline (Ford 2013). As
the image acquisition time varies, the tide height also
differs. Therefore, the extracted coastline also changes.
Each pixel has a water probability, which refers to the
ratio of the pixels classified as water to the total number
of repeat satellite observations. If the probability of
a pixel of water is greater than 50%, then it is classified
as water, and the others are treated as land. The result is
the final coastline. The same extraction process is also
used, and differences may exist in the spectral index
(such as MNDWI) or the threshold used to classify
water and land (Amani et al. 2020).
Intertidal extent extraction is closely related to
coastlines. The binary NDWI thresholding method
was employed to delineate land and water for each
14 W. SUN ET AL.
interval of the observed tidal range, that is, the differ­
ence between the observed highest and lowest tidal
heights (Alesheikh, Ghorbanali, and Nouri 2007). The
aforementioned operations have been performed on
10 tidal height intervals, and a complete relative
extent model was obtained. At the same time, the
standard deviation of the NDWI (for each tidal height
interval) was calculated, and then a confidence layer
was obtained.
5. Evolution of coastal remote sensing
To visually display the changes in coastal remote
sensing publications, we used the Publication Years
module of Web of Science (WOS) in obtaining the
annual publication of the core collection with the
subject keywords “coastline” and “remote sensing”
from 2000 to 2020. We also utilized the CiteSpace
software to process the retrieved results. A total of
643 articles were obtained. The number of studies
related to remote sensing in coastal zones indicates
a change of “rising first, then falling, and then rising”
since 2000, showing an overall upward trend, espe­
cially a significant increase after 2017, and reaching
a maximum of 91 articles in 2020 (Figure 4). To reflect
the proportion of coastal studies in the field of remote
sensing, we retrieved the number of articles related to
remote sensing under the same rule and obtained
77,174 articles in total. As shown by the yellow line
in Figure 4, the proportion of remote sensing studies
in coastal zones has remained at about 1% since 2000.
Figure 3. Diagram of combined tide and DEM method. C1 and C2 are the waterlines obtained on the basis of the remote sensing data
of different imaging times; the distance between C1 and C2 is set as △L.
To obtain the development status of coastal zone
remote sensing at each time stage, we used CiteSpace
in analyzing the collinear atlas of keywords from 2000
to 2020. The node type was a keyword, the time slice
was 1, and the selection criterion was TOP50%. That is,
keywords were selected from the top 50% of the
citation frequency of each time slice, the results as
shown in Figures 5 and 6.
The keywords not only are the refinement of the
research focus and direction of the publications,
but also the summary of the core of the publica­
tions. As shown in Figures 5 and 6, coastal zone
development can be divided into the following five
stages according to the ranking and clustering of
keywords and the analysis of hot spots in the
literature year by year:
(1) The keywords from 2000 to 2002 were “man­
agement” and “interferometry.” The research
at this stage took SAR image data as the
main data source. Some databases made
through optical satellite remote sensing
monitoring were applied to the protection
of ecological systems and planning for var­
ious effective management strategies for
managers.
(2) The keywords from 2003 to 2008 were “GIS,”
“mangroves,” “erosion,” and “beaches.” The
research hotspots in this stage were man­
groves and beaches in coastal ecosystems.
Based on GIS technology’s multisource data

integration capabilities, researchers were
able to capture the decade-long decline
and erosion processes of mangroves and
beaches by using a large volume of informa­
tion (Goffin et al. 2022; Mahdianpari et al.
2020; Rossetto 2023). Then, global forest
development models, such as mangrove for­
ests and coastline movement models, were
proposed (Wang et al. 2019b; Yang et al.
2022 and 2022c).
(3) The keywords from 2009 to 2013 were “GIS,”
“dynamics,” “vegetation,” and “coastline change.”
At this stage, few articles related to coastal remote
sensing were published, and the research focus
returned to the dynamic change of coastlines.
Based on GIS, satellite long-time series data, field
surveys, and other means, researchers con­
structed large-scale temporal and spatial dynamic
models of estuaries and coastal estuaries (Hardy,
Wu, and Peterson 2021; Li et al. 2019). Relative to
those in the previous stage, the types and cap­
abilities of modeling at this stage became rich and
strong (Tien Dat Pham et al. 2021).
(4) The keywords from 2014 to 2017 were “classifica­
tion,” “impacts,” “GIS,” “sea level rise,” “extraction”
and “Landsat.” As a result of the attention of the
international community to the ecological envir­
onment, the research at this stage focused closely
on the impact of human activities, such as eco­
nomic development, on coastal wetland systems.
Based on the development of Landsat 8 and
Figure 4. Annual publication of articles related to coastal zone remote sensing.
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 15
other satellites and machine learning, the applica­
tion of high spatial resolution images to supervise
the classification and extraction of coastlines
became a hot topic in this stage (He et al. 2022;
Wulder et al. 2022).
(5) The keywords from 2018 to 2020 were “impacts,”
“climate change,” “sea level rise,” “GIS,” “Landsat”
and “time series.” At this stage, the number of
studies related to remote sensing in coastal
zones gradually increased, and high-quality man­
grove review papers were published. With the
development of machine learning, such as neural
networks and rich time phase data, coastal zone,
mangroves, and port monitoring became
research hotspots. The application of machine
learning, cloud computing, and other technolo­
gies to remote sensing in coastal zones is
expected to become a hot research topic in the
future (Amani et al. 2020; Feng et al. 2022;
Sornette and Wu 2023).
(6) The keywords are classified into 10 classes
(Figure 6). As can be seen from Figure 6 that
there is a large overlap area among the clusters,
indicating that they are closely, the top five are
Landsat, accretion, GIS, random forest, and move­
ment. Landsat ranked first, thus indicating that
remote sensing in coastline extraction is closely
related to Landsat satellites. The research direc­
tions mainly include coastline change, evolution
erosion, impact, and management, the research
objects mainly include mangrove, coastal zone,
16 W. SUN ET AL.
Figure 5. Frequency order of keywords in coastal remote sensing papers published between 2000–2020 (data from Web of Science).
shoreline, and vegetation, the impact factors
include climate change.
6. Development and future research direction
Coastal zone monitoring is an important task in
sustainable development and environmental pro­
tection, and the coastline is one of the most
important linear features on the earth’s surface,
which has a highly dynamic nature. Over the last
decade, a range of airborne, satellite, and land-
based remote sensing techniques have become
more generally available for coastline extraction.
Multiple remote sensing platforms, multiple types
of sensors, and advanced algorithms facilitate fine
coastline extraction.
6.1 Application of multisource data fusion to
coastline information extraction
Potential data sources for coastline extraction include
historical photographs, coastal maps and charts, aerial
photography, beach surveys, and remote sensing ima­
gery derived from satellite platforms, and shore-based
HD cameras, covering visible, multispectral, hyperspec­
tral, SAR, LiDAR (Boak and Turner 2005; Meng et al. 2018).
At present, coastline extraction leans toward the com­
prehensive application of multisource data, and meth­
odologies have been developed to detect robust, fast,
and objective coastline features (Chen et al. 2019, 2019;
Gens 2010). Fusion technology can integrate spectral
features, geometric features, texture features, scattering
features, temperature features and terrain features effec­
tively, enhance the interpretation of remote sensing
images and suppress possible ambiguity, incomplete­
ness, uncertainty, and errors (Li et al. 2022; Zhang
2010). The integration of optical, thermal infrared,
radar, and LiDAR data can improve the spatial resolution,
distinguish the boundaries between water bodies and
other ground objects, and extract the accurate positions
of coastlines. In addition, the fusion of multisource data
will provide a great convenience for accurate coastline
extraction in specific application fields, including marine,
shipping, geography, economy, and environment.

Figure 6. Classification of keywords in coastal remote sensing papers published between 2000–2020 (data from Web of Science).
6.2 Application of advanced algorithms to
coastline extraction
Deep learning is a research hotspot in the field of
artificial intelligence that utilizes multilayer con­
volutional neural networks (U-Net, U 2 -Net,
SegNet, SeNet) to realize the abstraction and
learning of target features and constructs
a multilevel semantic hierarchical model from pix­
els to features and then to attributes (Kang et al.
2022; Tsiakos and Chalkias 2023). Deep learning
methods have also been applied to coastline
extraction (Seale et al. 2022; Zou et al. 2022).
With the increase of data sources, the complexity
of application scenarios leads to challenges in
coastline extraction. Deep learning, driven by
data, extracts useful information from data
through multilayer learning and objectively
mines possible relationships between data to
improve data processing efficiency and accuracy
and bring new opportunities for the intelligent
analysis and mining of coastline information in
complex geographical environments.
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING 17
6.3 Challenges of large-scale and rapid coastline
mapping
Many scholars have focused on coastline extraction
and the spatio – temporal evolution analysis of local
regions and have thus proposed several methodolo­
gies (Mutanga and Kumar 2019). However, traditional
methodologies are often difficult to use when dealing
with the collection, storage, and processing of mas­
sive data in global coastline mapping. Remote sen­
sing cloud computing platforms, such as the Google
Earth Engine with massive remote sensing data and
powerful data computing capabilities, and deep
learning technologies with powerful feature expres­
sion capabilities facilitate rapid global coastline
mapping.
7. Conclusions
With the rapid development of remote sensing satel­
lites with “high spatial, high temporal, and high spec­
tral” resolution, it has become the development trend
of coastline extraction quickly and accurately over
18 W. SUN ET AL.
large areas and over long periods. In the study, we
reviewed and critically compared methodologies
from different points of view, with particular emphasis
on the definition of coastlines, coastline products and
evaluation criterion, data sources and implementa­
tion of methodologies, and description of research
focus.
Due to the combined effects of intense human
activities and global climate change, coastline
have undergone dramatic changes in recent dec­
ades, affecting the entire population living in
coastal areas, accounting for approximately 60%
of the world’s population living in coastal areas.
Although a number of techniques are available to
accurately delineate the coastline from a variety
of remote sensing data, but only regionally.
However, comprehensive use of multi-source
remote sensing data to carry out large-scale,
long-time series and high-precision coastline
mapping is still the direction of future efforts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China [Grants No. 42122009, 42171311,
42271340, 41971296, 41801256, 42171326, 42176174],
Zhejiang Province “Pioneering Soldier” and “Leading
Goose” R&D Project [Grant No. 2023C01027], Zhejiang
Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants No.
LR19D010001, LQ18D010001], Fundamental Research Funds
for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang [Grant No.
SJLZ2022002], Public Projects of Ningbo City [Grant
No. 2021S089], Ningbo Science and Technology Innovation
2025 Major Special Project [Grants No. 2021Z107,
2022Z032], Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Remote
Sensing Science [Grant No. OFSLRSS202218], Chongqing
Technology Innovation and Application Development
Special Project [Grant No. cstc2020jscx-msxmX0193]. The
anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments to
help improve this manuscript, whose effort is also
appreciated.
Data availability statement
The data, models, or codes generated or used in this paper are
available upon reasonable request.
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