Australia is home to more than 10,000 beaches, ranging from a few dozen metres to hundreds of kilometres long. But increasingly, these beaches are slowly disappearing before our eyes. "Beaches across Australia are eroding, simply because waves come in pull sand away -- and big storm surges pull more sand away," IBM Systems Data Scientist Dr Adam Makarucha told the Gartner Application Architecture, Development, and Integration Summit in Sydney. While the likes of Gold Coast Council have invested AU$14 million into rehabilitation projects -- such as one for a 12km stretch of beach, equating to more than a million dollars per kilometre -- Makarucha said prevention is more viable than rehabilitation. Makarucha said the best way to prevent beach erosion is to look to a natural defence, such as seagrass.