Moroccan coastal areas are becoming more and more exposed to hazards related to storms and sea level rise. The Sidi Moussa cliff, which is situated south of Salé, is a sensitive coastal sector regularly hit by marine flooding during extreme phenomena. This study will create a high-resolution Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the area to better determine its morphological characteristics and its susceptibility to marine inundation. The topographic data were gathered by a differential Global Positioning System Real Time Kinematic (GPS-RTK) method. Indeed, the collected data have been treated in a geographic information system environment to generate the DTM and to conduct elevation analyses in detail. The obtained model will be a fundamental dataset for the future numerical simulation of coastal flooding and for the mapping of potentially flooded zones. This study will also offer, for the first time, a clear and detailed morphological expression of the Sidi Moussa cliff, for which no topographic data was previously available. A first look at the results shows a topography that appears irregular, where micro-reliefs and active erosion predominate, increasing the vulnerability of some sectors to wave overtopping during storms. The latter approach points out the contribution of high-resolution topographic data to the enhancement of coastal assessment and management.
Joudar et al. (Wed,) studied this question.