Observing changes from space to act on the ground
The Space for Shore consortium involves partners in six European countries where coastal erosion is a critical issue.
For four years, more than 70 scientific and operational organisations from the 6 member countries of the programme (France, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Romania and Norway) shared their concerns and expressed their needs for regular data and information to characterise the dynamics of the coastline, to evaluate the evolution of the erosion hazard and the vulnerability of coastal areas to climate change. This work made it possible to cover 4,500 km of European coastline in these 6 countries, from the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts, via the Atlantic-Channel-North Sea coastline, to the far reaches of the Arctic (Svalbard).
Given the scale of the data produced, automation and generalisation of algorithms have been the cornerstone of this large-scale work. Artificial intelligence has been widely used to monitor large, diverse and complex coastal areas over a long historical period and at high frequency.
A retrospective of more than 25 years has been compiled, describing historical and recent changes affecting European coastlines using satellite data, including those from the European Copernicus programme (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2). This unique satellite resource provides products describing beach and coastline dynamics in terms of coastline position, evolution of sedimentary structures and associated sand stocks, and characterisation of coastal erosion exposure.
It is clear that these new tools are an alternative and/or a support to traditional methods of monitoring the evolution of beaches and coastlines (field monitoring, aerial flights), in a context of climate change and rapid evolution, by providing:
- A relevant multi-scale vision of the processes affecting coastal areas
- A significant added value for coastal managers, by providing them with permanently updated data, in a very short time and at a lower cost, on the entire territory, synthesised into up-to-date information on the exposure of their coastline to erosion.
- Consolidate end user requirements: Conduct interviews with relevant end-users to collect needs in terms of morphological indicators to be monitor, the temporal period and frequency, and any requirements necessary to build the production roadmap and develop the corresponding algorithms.
- Define the technical specification of satellite-derived product: Develop, adapt, combine, and use algorithms to perform tests on pilot coastal areas for erosion monitoring on various types of coastlines.
- Provide Proof of Concept of experimental work: Test the algorithms in a limited set of areas and dates.
- Plan and develop the validation process and collect in-situ data.
Large-scale demonstration over nearly 1500 km of coastline selected as pilot areas: For each area of interest, the identified indicators were produced, carefully meeting the specifications detailed by the end–users. The demonstration focuced on three aspects:
- Extraction of the relevant indicator,
- Retrieval of relevant indicators over large areas,
- Detection of relevant indicators over long time periods exploiting historical satellite datasets.
Our demonstration was therefore fully representative, in terms of geographical and temporal coverage, of major threats and monitoring solutions identified in Europe as relevant by national and regional end–users.
- When appropriate, new methods have been developed to address relevant indicators that are neither described in the literature nor available in the toolboxes of the project partners.
Following the results obtained by the Space for Shore consortium characterising the coastal erosion in five ESA Member States (France, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Romania), the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to extend the project to achieve three main objectives:
- Extend the coverage (minimum 300 km) over the past 25 years for the Countries already engaged
- Extend the key indicator of coastal dynamics to Svalbard (minimum 300 km over the past 30 years)
- Update the products delivered to all project sites
In 2022-2023, ESA is supporting a new phase of the project : accelerating the awareness of coastal communities and decision-makers of the value of satellite-derived products for monitoring coastal dynamics. To do so :
- The main results of the project will be disseminated in regional, national and international media
- Training sessions on data appropriation and use will be organised in the six European countries
- A seminar on coastal erosion and spatial data will take place in June (France)