SubCoast

SubCoast is a proposal for a collaborative project aimed at developing a GMES-downstream service for assessing and monitoring subsidence hazards in coastal areas around Europe. It is firmly rooted to the GMES Service Element ‘Terrafirma’ (www.terrafirma.eu.com) which provides a ground motion hazard information service, distributed throughout Europe via national geological surveys and institutions. GMES Service Element ‘Terrafirma’ is based upon the remote sensing technique of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry which has the power to map millimetric ground motion phenomena over large areas from space. The service currently focuses on urban subsidence in European cities. SubCoast will bring the service of ‘Terrafirma’ one step further downstream in establishing a sustainable GMES-downstream service by: • Further structuring ‘Terrafirma’s’ developed service for Persistent Scatterer Interferometry by integrating this service with (1) products from GMES Land and Marine Core Services to facilitate scientific and socio-economic analyses, (2) other earth observation products to broaden the service portfolio and answer all relevant end-user issues as much as possible and (3) terrestrial data and scientific models to further validate the chosen approach. SubCoast will bring these necessary RTD-components within the context of pilot services in order to have direct visibility of the ouput to the end-user. • Connecting to a well established user base with an urgent need for geo-information in order to make well balanced decisions which may have far reaching consequences. This user base consists of environmental and water managers on regional, national and european level who are faced with imminent hazards due to the effects of climate change in coastal lowland areas all over Europe and eventually, worldwide. SubCoast will serve this user base by specifying the service-portfolio also by the outcome of scenario-studies and impact analyses so that current end-user issues are well connected to future issues. • Building a one-stop-shop portal which has the capability of delivering all necessary terrestrial and earth observation data as well as SubCoast’s end-products on subsidence for coastal lowland areas all over Europe. This portal will serve as an information hub, both for local and regional stakeholders as well as for European stakeholders, and will give the opportunity to serve the stakeholder community worldwide, thus contributing to a sustainable and self-supportive future for SubCoast.