Knowledge on shallow water seabed habitats and morphology is key for marine and coastal management, such as EC reporting on maritime directive and coastal and marine engineering and planning activities which are part of the blue economy. Digital information on seabed characteristics is required for amongst others shallow-water dredging, sand reclamation and navigation. Furthermore, the shallow water euphotic zone is of particular importance, because it is home to critical habitats which impact biodiversity, carbon storage and coastal protection.
Thus, a strong demand exists to map and monitor shallow water zones on small and large scale. Currently this data demand is filled with labour and equipment intensive survey and sampling methods, such as boat or airborne surveys, diving transects or drop-down cameras, and – increasingly, but still on a low technological level – manual satellite or airborne interpretation. None of these methods have the capability to allow a continuous and objective monitoring within standard budgets and time constrains.
We believe, that modern satellite capabilities and aquatic Earth Observation (EO) analysis can be brought to a level which significantly improve the current state of the art of data gathering of shallow water morphology, habitats and its trends over time. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 data, recent breakthroughs in the physics-based modelling of aquatic EO and machine learning procedures together with new EO archiving and processing centre form the solution of the propose concept. EOMAP and team have already shown the potential by mapping parts of the German Baltic seafloor habitats and the Great Barrier Reef. However, work has to be done to improve algorithms to increase overall accuracy, reduce manual interpretation and interaction, generate operational software solution and integrate the big data from current EO missions, including the Copernicus fleet. Especially the Sentinel-2s with its high revisit time and high spatial resolution will be key to map seafloor habitats, and more than that, have the potential to generate new information, such as the seasonal growth of seagrass, which will allow to better map and understand this environment and respond to EC reporting and shallow water data demand more effective and precise.
The 4S solution provides a cloud-based software solution which empowers the users to map and monitor seafloor habitats, morphology and depth from the comfort of his office. The 4S software is accessed by an intuitive user interface (webapp) and through programming interfaces, which allow to smoothly integrate data and analytical process into own workflows, such as demonstrated by QPS, which developed a 4S extension for their widely known hydrographic software suite.
Objective 1 (O1): Easy access and generation of satellite-derived data and tools to map and monitor seabed with Copernicus data being a core dataset
Objective 2 (O2): A solution which allows an easy integration into clients’ workflows.
Objective 3 (O3): Global evaluation and multi-purpose use
Objective 4 (O4): Substantial increase in the market enabled by integrating Copernicus data in the coastal and marine sector with state-of-the-art innovative technologies
Objective 5 (O5): Increase impact and dissemination through dedicated capacity building
