Natural coast areas — Dataset

The project to define the Italian coastline and defence works was carried out by A.P.A.T in collaboration with Planetek Italia s.r.l.. The project was aimed at studying the state of the Italian coasts and their evolution. The characterisation of the coastline was carried out by means of photo-interpretation and video digitisation starting from the database made up of colour orthophotos IT2000, carried out in the two-year period 1998/1999. This first activity has produced the most recent and uniform representation on a national scale 1:25,000 of the morphological structure of the Italian coast and has allowed the localisation and classification of the defence works carried out in recent decades for the protection of coastlines against erosive phenomena and natural hazards. The coastline derived from orthophotos was subsequently superimposed and compared with the coastline extracted from the historical reference IGM cartography on a scale of 1:25,000. This second activity has enabled, through appropriate elaboration, the analysis extended to a time span of about 40-50 years of the variations of the shoreline and the identification and classification of land areas in progress and backwards.