Earth Observations for Coastal Hazards Monitoring and International Services: A European Perspective

This article aims to provide a tour of satellite missions for Coastal Hazards Monitoring, of relevant applications, as well as the downstream International Services such as the Copernicus Ocean and Land Monitoring Services. Earth observation (EO) satellite remote sensing provides global, repetitive and long-term observations with increasing resolution with every new generation of sensors. They permit the monitoring of small-scale signals like the ones impacting the coastal zone. EO missions are showcased in this article. Transforming the data products based on the satellite mission ground segment (usually called geophysical products, geophysical data records or so-called Level 2 products) into information useable by managers and decision-makers is done by downstream international services. This is an essential step to increase the uptake of satellite data for the benefit of society. Here, the type of services provided by, e.g., the European Copernicus Programme, is described along with examples of applications, such as monitoring storm surges.