Posted on July 22, 2026
Large, colorful homes propped up on tall stilts dot much of the 120 miles of North Carolina’s skinny and sandy Outer Banks. The coastal homes have long faced bright blue waves largely undeterred, with the stilts dug in deep enough to keep the structures standing amid swells and storms. There have been some exceptions, though, in recent years. Along a short stretch of coastline in the village of Rodanthe, between May 2020 and November 2024, 11 houses shattered into the roiling water and littered the beach with dangerous debris.
Rising seas, strong waves, fierce winds, and sinking land are all contributing to coastal erosion. In some places, the edge of the beach has shrunk by more than 10 feet (3 meters) annually.
But the pace and scale of recent damage here is new, and alarming.
Between September 15 and October 28 last year, 15 homes were lost—as many as five in one day. And they were lost in the village of Buxton, a half-hour drive south of Rodanthe, where houses hadn’t typically succumbed to the waves. Another four fell in February 2026. In early June, one more collapsed bringing the total so far to 20 homes lost in Buxton since September 2025.
“This was drastic, even for us,” said Kristen Stilson, a geographic information system (GIS) analyst for Dare County, North Carolina. “I think that shocked a lot of people.”
When hurricane-force winds, high waves, and even an extreme snowstorm bore down on the coast, the houses on stilts—standing on increasingly weakened sand—had little left to do but collapse.
Around the same time the houses began collapsing, Stilson received Federal Aviation Administration certification to fly the GIS department’s new DJI Matrice 350 RTK drone. She flew her first flight on October 8 to collect data and document just how the coasts of Buxton and Rodanthe had changed.
“These weren’t condemned houses. They were perfectly safe houses,” she said.
As more homes in those two areas fall into the sea and off the map, concerned residents face two options: relocation or acquisition. They can seek to have their home, already raised onto stilts, moved further back or to another location, or bought out and removed. Both take a few years from start to finish—and that’s if there’s federal funding available. Many property owners, and their houses, don’t have that much time.
Buying Time
The only thing that can buy more time is beach nourishment. Sand from elsewhere nearby is pumped in to fill in the eroding beach. It comes at a cost of roughly $10 million per mile, according to Dare County’s own estimates, and more in high-erosion areas like Rodanthe. The goal of beach nourishment has been to bolster the buffer between the water and North Carolina Highway 12, the primary road into and out of Dare County.
Inevitably, though, the coast will continue to erode. Every five years, the beach will need to be renourished.
The houses that fall don’t simply float out to sea. The current brings the houses back to the beach in pieces. The National Park Service, which manages the beach, picks up those pieces every day—old septic systems, kitchen utensils, washing machines, board game pieces, insulation, drywall, concrete pools, and more. It’s costly to clean up and a risk to beach visitors, including the many tourists who flock to the Outer Banks each year.
Capturing the Changing Coastline
The state had captured high-resolution aerial imagery of the Outer Banks from aircraft every four years, sometimes more often if the county paid for the flight. Because of the time it takes to process imagery, Dare County would get the data nearly a year after it was captured. And that data would be quickly outdated—the sand constantly shifts, roads get washed out, and entirely new islands form and disappear in less than a year.
The county’s two-person GIS team had long prioritized collecting imagery, needing a better way to stay up to date with land changes in between state surveys. Now, the drone has become vital. Flying it, though, comes with its own challenges.
The Outer Banks—where the Wright brothers launched the first flight—is famously windy, and air traffic includes low-flying military jets returning to or departing from one of the coastal military bases. The beach is also categorized as a national seashore, managed by the National Park Service, which prohibits drone launches on the shore.
So, Stilson coordinates her launches on private property with the property-owner’s approval. Many enthusiastically offer their properties after she explains the work she’s conducting to show dramatic changes on the shore.
The concern from residents is palpable. At a community meeting in September 2025, one resident likened the sound of a collapsing home to ribs being pried open in an emergency room. Another resident, Brian Harris of Buxton, expressed resignation that more houses would fall into the sea well before any solutions were found.
“A whole lot of effort went into trying to get ahead of [shoreline loss],” Harris said. “It happened so quick.” He hasn’t personally lost a home to the erosion, but one that had been in his wife’s family succumbed to the waves. Harris recalled the feeling of watching it fall, and with it so many memories.
“The drone footage is really important,” he said, noting how the recording raises attention from lawmakers and researchers to find solutions.
Mapping an Interactive View of the Shore
Stilson built an interactive sliding view of the coast using the drone-captured imagery that had been processed with GIS technology. She debuted the app in February, showing just how much was lost to coastal erosion in such a short amount of time. The online viewer compares before-and-after dates—for example, what the coastline looked like on October 8, 2025, versus February 4, 2026.
“People needed to see it,” Stilson said. In those swipes back and forth, the changes are unmistakable. The houses disappear and the water creeps closer to the next row of homes that were never intended to be waterfront properties.
On the first day it was publicized, the app was viewed 2,000 times. That’s as much as some Dare County maps are seen the entire year, Stilson said.
Ever since, drone data has been in high demand. Requests have come in from the tax, planning, and grants departments, and county manager’s office. Stilson also plans to document the beach nourishment project, before and after.
‘Just Get Up There’
Now, she flies Buxton at least once a month, and Rodanthe, too, where the danger of loss is higher. She documents other areas of Dare County quarterly.
“I don’t hear around here, ‘what is GIS?’” she said. “People are starting to see how useful it is.”
Globally, nearly a quarter of all sandy beaches across all five continents are losing more than a foot and a half of ground each year. GIS maps and analysis of drone footage provide a way to quantify the change and the success of mitigation measures. “You don’t need a big drone. Just get up there and start collecting the imagery,” she said.
