Project context
Coasts are vital to humanity, with 40% of the global population living within 100 kilometers of the shore. These regions are hubs for transportation, industry, energy generation, tourism, and resource extraction. They also serve as critical habitats for over 90% of marine life, including fish, whose populations depend on physical factors like winds, waves, river inflows, and coastline shapes. Changes in these factors can significantly affect coastal ecosystems’ productivity and biodiversity.
However, coasts face mounting challenges, including climate change (sea-level rise, warming, acidification, and shifting currents), coastal erosion, extreme weather, pollution, biodiversity loss, and socioeconomic pressures. Monitoring coastal dynamics is essential for sustainable management, disaster risk reduction, and protecting both ecosystems and human communities.
Satellites are essential to observe coastal dynamics, providing global, frequent and medium-to-high-resolution data on parameters such as sea level, wind speed and direction, wave height and direction, current speed and direction, temperature and salinity. For over 30 years, satellite missions equipped with altimeters, radars, and spectrometers, such as those operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), have provided critical insights into coastal processes. However, coastal regions present specific challenges due to their smaller spatial scales, greater variability, and intricate features such as estuaries and lagoons. Recent and upcoming satellite missions are advancing coastal monitoring by offering enhanced spatial and temporal resolutions (e.g. Sentinel-1 and -2, and the SWOT mission), improved radar techniques (e.g. SAR and InSAR) and new sensors (e.g. hyperspectral imaging from PRISMA and PACE). These technologies are deepening our understanding of coastal processes and addressing long-standing challenges.
ESA decided to launch a call and fund projects addressing these issues. Coastdyn is among them, focusing specifically on coastal dynamics.
Objectives
CoastDyn project addresses key scientific and observational challenges in understanding coastal ocean dynamics. Its main objectives are:
- Leverage Synergies: Utilize data from the growing European Earth Observation (EO) satellite fleet, particularly Sentinel missions, combined with in-situ observations and advanced algorithms and IA techniques, to develop high-resolution, multi-mission products describing coastal dynamics (e.g., sea level, currents, wind, waves, temperature, salinity).
- Product Validation: Ensure the accuracy of these products by validating them and providing uncertainty estimates to support scientific applications.
- Scientific Insights: Use the newly developed products in conjunction with other tools and a multidisciplinary approach to address critical scientific questions and close major knowledge gaps about coastal processes.
Expected outputs
The different products will be made available, as well as the case studies on the specific pilot sites. A roadmap will synthesize the the projects achievements and lessons learnt, and include recommendations on how to further advance the use of EO technology to address the main knowledge gaps in scientific research and science-policy integration in accordance.
Schedule
The project Kick-off took place mid-June 2025.
June 2025 – Sept 2025 A state of the art of the coastal dynamics field
Sept 2025 – June 2026: Development and generation of products
June 2026 – June 2027 : Case studies
March 2027 – June 2027 : Roadmap