The project of the delimitation of the Public Maritime Domain of the Portuguese North Coast was conducted under European regulations and aimed at enabling the update of the public maritime domain, as well as the realization of rehabilitation and recovery operations of degraded coastal areas.

The developed project comprised the coastal strip of the municipalities of Viana do Castelo, Caminha and Esposende and resorted to combined criteria of oceanography, geomorphology and coastal evolution and an extensive field work in order to have a detailed knowledge of the area and how it is affected by coastal processes. A study of the recent coastal evolution was also performed, through comparative analysis of aerial photographs and the analysis of coastal processes, particularly the calculation of maximum ebbing coordinates for specific oceanographic conditions.