The beaches are a tourist attraction and an engine for the economic development of Catalonia. However, rescue and lifeguard services have not advanced much in the last twenty years and many beaches full of tourists do not have lifeguards. Currently, in Catalonia there is no comprehensive system of rescue and first aid , which is coordinated and managed by a single entity. This is combined with a notorious lack of accurate information and in-depth knowledge of the real needs of the territory in relation to water monitoring services.
In Catalonia, the safety of beach users is the responsibility of the town councils. There is no law that determines how many human or material resources should be allocated to the beaches, so the distribution of resources varies depending on the economic capacity of each council. Catalonia has almost 700 km of beaches, spread over 70 municipalities, with more than 500 beaches.
The collaborative research between the company Auditek and the Rovira i Virgili University has allowed the development of tools and models for safer beaches and more efficient services for all users. To understand the objective of this Industrial Doctorate project, we need to imagine that we are on a very crowded beach on the Catalan coast. If we have to coordinate the rescue and rescue service on this beach... How many watchtowers would we place? How far from the water? How many lifeguards? How far apart are they? Therefore, the Safe Beaches project aims to answer these questions (and others) through a foundation based on scientific data.
The project to improve rescue and lifeguard services on Catalan beaches was born from the concern of Pablo Martin , the project's industrial PhD student, in order to make a scientific contribution to beach safety management. The impulse of the Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies Research Group ( GRATET ) of the Rovira i Virgili University, together with the collaboration of the University of Murcia, has allowed this initiative to take shape.
The project starts in 2020 with an exhaustive descriptive study of the rescue and first aid services of the more than 500 Catalan beaches on the Catalan coast . With the collected information, we work on the development of variables and management models for these services. The most significant contribution of this research is the integration of a Geographic Information System ( GIS ) in the management of the information that is generated on the beaches.
Through a cartographic representation, the data can be analyzed more precisely. For example, by means of representation in a heat map, the points with the most incidences can be identified. These heat maps are a tool that makes the density of incidents visible in real time, allowing a quick and accurate response.
With the help of geolocation, these maps reveal critical “hot” areas, making the task of managers easier as opposed to using traditional lists of incidents. This innovation promises to revolutionize the way in which the 70 coastal municipalities manage their beaches.
The research results of the Safe Beaches project serve the purpose of allowing lifeguard services to be sized based on scientific evidence . Scientific evidence can be used to allocate resources and develop surveillance models based on occupancy or incident density. The project has also introduced tools such as the "infoplatges" application that allows georeferencing incidents and expands the possibilities of data analysis. This new tool provides detailed information such as densities, distances, response times and media incident ratios. The app is already in use at some beaches, and its adoption can significantly improve lifeguard services.
Like any research project there are challenges to overcome, which stimulate the research process itself. In this case, the first challenge is to achieve standardization focused on the use of each beach and not on the financial capacities of the municipalities . To achieve this, it is crucial to create data-driven models. Currently, the funds allocated to lifeguarding on the beaches are more associated with the economic capacity of the municipalities than with the real needs of the beach. As a result, busy beaches in smaller municipalities do not have lifeguard services. The next challenge is to advance in the implementation of technological instruments that provide the essential data to devise more effective solutions, adapted to the evolution of the circumstances of the beaches.
