U.S. drowning deaths are attributed to rip currents each year. They also produce tens of thousands of lifeguard rescues.
Coastal hazards can change in minutes.
Rip currents, sneaker waves, changing visibility, crowding, and swimmer behavior do not occur as separate problems. ShoreSense brings those signals together so risk can be understood as it develops.
Sneaker waves can surge this far onto apparently dry beach, sometimes after long stretches of smaller waves.
The estimated chance of fatal drowning at a beach protected by USLA-affiliated lifeguards.
One system connects the beach to the response.
A ShoreSense station combines camera and environmental inputs with local edge computing. The software follows people and water movement, updates a littoral digital twin, forecasts localized risk, and presents response options for human review.
How ShoreSense worksHardware
Shoreline cameras, environmental sensors, and connected coastal feeds
Edge AI
Local detection, tracking, optical flow, and hazard analysis
Forecast
A digital twin mapping people, conditions, uncertainty, and changing risk
Response
Prioritized warnings, patrol coverage, staging, and routing for human review
Up to 98%
person-in-water detection accuracy across controlled prototype evaluations
Evaluation combines coastal footage, public datasets, field data, and simulated hazard and response scenarios.
Built with the people who study and protect the coast.
ShoreSense combines local pilot deployments with scientific guidance across coastal resilience, environmental sensing, and applied research.
Half Moon Bay area
Two deployed pilots.
Two active ShoreSense pilots in the Half Moon Bay area support ongoing evaluation of coastal sensing and beach-safety workflows.
Research collaboration and guidance
ShoreSense has been informed by research collaboration and guidance spanning NASA, Stanford University, the MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering, and the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience.
Research that strengthens the forecast.
ShoreSense’s environmental forecasting draws on offshore-wave research into how wave-energy patterns relate to coastal water-level changes.
Research overviewBring ShoreSense to the coast.
Connect about coastal evaluation, technical collaboration, or the next phase of field testing.
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