Atkin, E.A. and Greer, D., 2019. A comparison of methods for defining a surf break's swell corridor. In: Bryan, K.R. and Atkin, E.A. (eds.), Surf Break Management in Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 87, pp. 70–77. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

A swell corridor is the offshore extension of a surf break that waves travel through before reaching the surf break area. Establishing the location and characteristics of a swell corridor is imperative to making sustainable decisions regarding surfing resources. To date, there are no known published studies that consider how a swell corridor should be spatially and quantitatively defined. This study considers different numerical modelling and post processing approaches to constructing a surf break's swell corridor. The basis for defining the footprint of the swell corridor for each of the approaches is to simulate a range of wave conditions, and use streamlines to determine the origin of the swell. Methods consider streamlines that originate offshore and run landward and streamlines that run from a surf break to a point offshore, referred to as forward and reverse methods. These methods are jointly applied to both hindcast and idealized wave conditions. The collection of streamlines for a surf break are used to create maps of Relative Percentage Activity – a normalized count per spatial bin. The recommended method for the characterization and definition of a surf break's swell corridor is the full hindcast with reverse streamline method.