FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCSC) — Folly Beach is considering using artificial intelligence to help plan for the future of the beach environmentally and for tourism.
The city is considering spending $76,500 from the beach preservation fund on an AI monitoring system through Surfline Coastal Intelligence. City council will vote on the proposal Tuesday.
Folly Beach begins its annual beach survey process at the start of hurricane season each year.
Dr. Nicole Elko, a beach management consultant for the city, treks across Folly Beach each June with a tool that tracks elevation on land and in the water.
“That gives us information on the width of the beach, the height of the dune,” Elko said.
The machine communicates with satellites to document exact location changes over time.
“It also lets us know ‘hey, before the 2026 hurricane season, this is what our beach was,’ so if there is a storm, we can come back and survey again and quantify the loss,” Elko said. “It’s really important for federal funding to help repair damages if they occur.”
The AI system would serve a dual purpose for science and tourism.
“The science piece is helping us with funding with infrastructure planning and with determining when we need to do the next re-nourishment, but the other element is actually counting the number of people that are out here,” Elko said.
The system could help determine where lifeguards are needed based on how many people are in the water over time and support other safety programs.
“We don’t have anything that tells us how many people are on the beach on a given day, so for example, if we’re talking to the state legislature saying Folly Beach needs funding because we’re bringing in thousands and thousands of visitors every year, contributing to the state economy, well now we finally have a way to count that and to quantify that tourism benefit,” Elko said.
Chris Bizzell, mayor of Folly Beach, said the data could help make arguments to state and federal legislators.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is get in front of state and federal legislators to basically emphasize the economic impacts of the beaches so having that visitor data can really help make that argument, and having the data about the beach health erosion patterns, that type of thing, that’ll help us make better, smarter grant proposals,” Bizzell said.
The system could improve future preservation efforts and daily decisions, such as guiding visitors to wider stretches of beach when erosion is worse in certain areas.
“Maybe the beach is really narrow in one part because of chronic erosion, but plenty wide somewhere else; they can direct traffic to say you know, ‘maybe you don’t want to go to the beach at 10th east today, but maybe the beach around the piers is a place to target,’” Elko said.
If approved, there will be five cameras monitoring the beach for one year.
If successful, Elko said they hope to consider expanding.
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