Abstract
The number of web cameras installed along shorelines has increased significantly in recent years. Unfortunately, these cameras are overwhelmingly passive in their application: they monitor ocean conditions but do nothing to detect threats and alert other systems. This constitutes a lost opportunity, especially in light of recent hurricane and tsunami disasters. Though such threats can be predicted by meteorological or seismological agencies, localized predictions of the size and arrival times of large waves have not been feasible. Hence, there is a need for a broadly deployable system for detecting wave dynamics. In this paper, we propose such a system. Using standard video footage from web cameras, our system can detect local formation of large waves and thereby reduce their threat potential. Unlike previously proposed wave detection systems based on imaging, such as conventional block matching methods, ours does not require particularly high resolution or stereography, nor is it computationally complex. Based purely on calculating the phase difference between consecutive images of a wave using Fourier transform, our system can detect the displacement of waves with high accuracy.
