The coastal and marine environments of the ESA EO4SD (Earth Observation for Sustainable Development) regions of focus (Caribbean, West Africa, Western Indian Ocean, Northern Indian Ocean and East Asia Pacific) are rich and diverse, possessing high levels of biodiversity and productivity. These ecosystems are subject to climatic and anthropogenic pressures, which affect both the resilience of living resources and the services derived from them. Coastal locations have always been important sites of human settlement and today a substantial and increasing proportion of the world’s population are vulnerable to marine flooding and coastal erosion, putting communities, essential infrastructure and economies at risk. Additionally, for countries to benefit from growing Blue Economies, they must understand the available resources and have the tools to monitor and manage them effectively.

Robust environmental information for the coastal and marine areas in many of these regions is sparse. This is due to the difficulty of collecting data in these locations, due to the problem of access (lack of road infrastructure or suitable survey vessels), difficult terrain and the vast areas to be covered. Earth Observation (EO) is a vital tool in the journey towards more effective management of the coastal and marine environment.

EO4SD is an ESA initiative aiming to achieve a step change in the uptake of satellite-based environmental information by International Financing Institution (IFI) regional and global programmes. The UK’s National Oceanography Centre is working with a consortium of seven European organisations, over three years, to deliver EO services in the Marine and Coastal Resources Management thematic area: EO4SD-Marine.

The project, initiated in mid-2018, is working with a range of IFIs (World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and African Development Bank) and their Client States, to define and implement a large-scale demonstration of the application of EO-derived information.

Activities include:
• Strategic planning, communication and stakeholder engagement to define user needs
• Design and implementation of demonstration marine and coastal EO information services
• Robust delivery and upscaling of a cluster of streamlined ‘satellite to user’ services in partnership with key stakeholders
• Capacity building and mainstreaming to enable continued use of marine EO data beyond the timescales of this project
• Impact evaluation and implementation review

EO4SD-Marine will deliver a range of services under four themes: Hydrographic information; Coastal Environment (from both land and water perspectives); Surveillance and monitoring; and Information to support the Blue Economy. The expertise for delivery of the required EO services is drawn from leading institutes, companies and individuals working in satellite oceanography, leveraging existing projects and activities wherever practicable. The project will provide improved capability for accessing robust evidence-based information to underpin sustainable development and management activities. This capability will help partner countries to build a resilient marine and coastal socioecological system, and support their growing Blue Economies.

EO4SD-Marine will support the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in several respects. It is particularly concerned with Goal 14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development, providing services for, inter alia: aquaculture site selection; Marine Protected Area planning and management; fisheries surveillance; and marine pollution detection and monitoring. In addition to supporting attainment of SDG goals, some of these services are aligned with SDG indicators and can be used in the monitoring of progress towards their realisation. For example, the monitoring of water quality through chlorophyll concentration can be used towards the provision of an index of coastal eutrophication (SDG indicator 14.1.1).

A large element of EO4SD-Marine is capacity building to enable local actors to access and use EO data independently, following completion of the project. This also supports the SDGs, specifically: Goal 9 Build a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation and Goal 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, by addressing targets 9.5.2 and 13.b.1, increasing the number of researchers and raising capacities for planning and management.

Here we present an overview of project implementation, including the strategic approach and details of the portfolio of services. These will be linked to SDGs and the wider role EO can play in the upcoming UN Decade of the Oceans.

It is well established that global sea-level is increasing and that large-scale weather patterns are changing. However, across large parts of the world, there is a lack of observational data from in‑situ instrumentation available on which to implement evidence-based approaches to coastal adaptation. In the South West Indian Ocean, Mozambique and Madagascar have large coastal populations whose lives and economic security are vulnerable to the consequences of climate variability and change.

With access to improved regional information on coastal risk factors (sea level, wave and wind extremes) plans to protect coastal communities and safeguard economic activity can be improved. This information can also contribute to improving industrial and commercial competitiveness in the maritime sector, which is heavily dependent on access to accurate relevant oceanographic information

In the past it has been difficult to retrieve satellite altimeter data close to the coast, due to land contamination of the return waveform. Using an innovative coastal processor, developed by the NOC, UK, a new satellite altimeter sea-level dataset for the South West African coastline has been generated. These data are now being validated against available tide gauge data and analysed for regional characteristics in sea-level variability, including long-term sea-level trends.

These data, together with climatological ocean wind, wave and surface current data are being provided through C-RISe, a Coastal Risk Information Service, to partner organisations in Mozambique and Madagascar to inform decision-making and reduce the impact of coastal inundation and increasingly variable weather patterns.

The three main objectives of the C-Rise project are to:
• Deliver a Coastal Risk Information service, providing satellite-derived information about coastal vulnerability to environmental threats such as sea level rise and extreme wind and wave events.
• Apply and evaluate the C-RISe service through a set of Use Cases, applying the C-RISe products to end use applications meeting local priorities.
• Build local capacity to use satellite data to provide scientific decision support for strategy development, governance and management of coastal areas to increase resilience to coastal hazards.


A key objective of C-RISe is to support the development of local capacity to access, process and apply satellite data. This is achieved through a range of Use Cases which are evaluating the C‑RISe service in different application areas, including: maritime safety, coastal erosion, coastal defence planning, fisheries, marine and coastal ecosystem management

Local users are also being trained in the use of marine satellite data to quantify coastal hazards and incorporate this information into ongoing programmes. Two series of training workshops have been organised and held in Mozambique and Madagascar: “Wind, Wave and Sea Level Information from Satellites”, and “Tools to Apply Satellite Data to Coastal Risk”.

This presentation will introduce the project, summarise key findings, and present results from the Use Cases, highlighting areas of most benefit and future interest.

C-RISe is funded by the UK Space Agency under the International Partnership Programme. The UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP) is a five-year, £152 million programme designed to partner UK space expertise with overseas governments and organisations. It is funded from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

Baseline determination and operational continental scale monitoring of water quality are required for reporting on marine and inland water related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Surface water is an important global resource and plays a fundamental role in biogeochemical cycling, maintenance of biodiversity, human wellbeing and prosperity. While the specific SDGs that are dedicated to water is formulated in SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and SDG 14 (Life below water), water runs as a common link through several of the other goals and indicators. Improving natural resource management and protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems is a key priority for the SDGs. It requires the implementation of integrated water resources management systems. However, in many countries and regions, there are limited in situ monitoring programs and constraints on financial resources which impede acquisition of the in situ data required to adequately report on the SDGs. Incompatibilities in the content and scale of state and territory environmental reports confound attempts to integrate water resource data into a consistent national reporting. In addition, existing monitoring practices do not encompass the breadth of temporal and spatial scales required for standardised baseline establishment or reporting on continental scale indicators germane to human health, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity.
Estimating water quality parameters from Earth Observation (EO) data may provide a consistent reporting mechanism to support sustainable resource management. Retrieval of limited water quality information from EO data can provide an improved understanding of the variability within water bodies for the resource managers by filling temporal and spatial gaps between periodic in situ observations. Data can be used to assess coastal eutrophication, primary productivity, phytoplankton bloom formation, carbon in the water column, light availability, fresh water extent and ecosystem changes. These assessments directly or indirectly addresses indicators for SDG 6.3.1 (wastewater safely treated), 6.3.2 (waterbodies with good ambient water quality), 6.4.2 (level of water stress), 6.6.1 (change in the extent of water-related ecosystems over time), 14.1.1 (coastal eutrophication), 14.3.1 (marine acidity) and 15.1.2 (important sites for terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity).
Successful implementation of continental-scale water quality retrieval from EO relies on good pre-processing of the TOA data and on accurately characterizing the optical complexity of the water bodies under examination. One method to approach this optical complexity is through Optical Water type classification (OWT).
The objective of this study was to use OWTs to develop a method to implement a physics-based EO inversion models at continental scales. The intent is to produce integrated products showing key indicators, such as water quality, algal blooms and estimates of primary production and thus to significantly enhance reporting of SDGs in coastal and marine waters.
A database of a range of in situ bio-optical observations collected in Australian coastal waters, capturing their bio-optical response over a range of seasonal and geographical variability, was collated. Simulated surface reflectance spectra, based on the water column constituents of the database was used for analysis. A workflow was developed to cluster the modelled spectral response and analyse the bio-optical characteristics comprising unique OWT groupings.
We demonstrate how reflectance spectra can be used to drive OWT classification, even when isolated components of the bio-optical properties may not clearly distinguish this separation. Five distinct optical water types emerged: Two coastal clusters, two highly turbid clusters and a predominantly estuarine cluster.
The potential of using our method to identify and confirm gaps in the spatial and spectral coverage of the bio-optical database will be discussed, along with techniques that may enable translating the clustering results into a more robust operational implementation of physics-based water quality mapping methods. There is considerable work to be done to validate and implement the concepts explored in this work. Our aim is to provide a method and tools to address implementation issues at a continental scale. These methods can also be used to inform where investment for in situ bio-optical data acquisition may be better targeted to achieve a more comprehensive characterization of all Australian coastal waters which can contribute to global initiatives like the SDGs.

Water-related ecosystems provide important social and economic benefits to societies, such as provision of drinking water and sanitation, recreational opportunities, maintenance of aquatic habitats to support biodiversity and fishery industries, water for key sectors such as energy and agriculture, and regulation of water flows. SDG Goal 6 is addressing all water related questions with 11 different indicators of which 6.6.1 and 6.6.3 are the ones addressing water quantity and water quality with the strongest potential for EO to provide valuable information for countries to fulfil their reporting.

In our presentation we will demonstrate how the European Copernicus Global Land Service, and here specifically the Inland Water products, can support countries to overcome some of the information gaps they have for reporting for SDG indicators 6.6.1 and 6.3 for water quality.

The Lake Water products within the Copernicus Global Land Service provide an optical and thermal characterization of nominally 1000 inland water bodies, which will be enlarged during 2019 to all resolvable lakes. The production is based on Sentinel-3 data (OLCI and SLSTR) for the currently ongoing NRT service. The products contain four (sets) of parameters: lake water surface temperature, lake water reflectance (all wavebands that are available after atmospheric correction), turbidity and a trophic state index in 11 classes derived from chlorophyll-a concentration. Production and delivery of the parameters are over set 10-day intervals. While turbidity, trophic state index and temperature are provided as 10days averages, the lake water reflectance product contain the best representative spectrum of the covered time span in order to preserve the spectral reflectance vector. The products are available in 300m resolution, and additionally in a demonstration mode in 100m for the water quality parameters based on Sentinel-2. LSWT is provided in 1km resolution only. The production process starts from OLCI and SLSTR Level 1 products. The algorithms used to derive the optical lake water products are implemented in the Calimnos processing chain and were tuned and validated against 13 predefined optical water types in the NERC (UK) GloboLakes project. The LSWT retrieval is based on developments from ESA SST-CCI and GloboLakes. Besides the NRT services based on OLCI and SLSTR, the full archives from MERIS and (A)ATSR are available for the time span 2002 – 2012. All products are publicly available via the Copernicus Global Land Service Website and Viewing Services and thus are easily accessible by countries for further analysis. As intermediate step it is possible to provide tailored products for the countries who do not want to deal with raster data sets but are more interested in receiving statistical extraction about chlorophyll concentration, algal bloom occurrence, percentage of surface water effected by eutrophic classes etc. However, a long-term goal of countries is to gain the capacity to process data by their own and to derive the relevant information. We are in discussions with UN as well as the countries how this Copernicus Service can help to best provide the required global dataset and, at the time, serve specific country needs for tools and platforms, for capacity building, for EO data access, for integration with national data. A key aspect of a Copernicus Service is its long term, sustained operational character. However, this is only assured if the delivered products meet user requirements and are properly taken up.

In order to show the how Copernicus Inland Water Products can serve the SDGs, we will present some use cases on validation examples and demonstrating how EO data can be used for the interpretation of the water quality in lakes and large rivers and what the products show about seasonality, occurrence of algal blooms, exceptional behaviours (in suspended solids and chlorophyll).

Water plays an essential and crosscutting role in the sustainable management of land use – in particular in the context of agriculture as 70% of freshwater is used for irrigation, but also for erosion, natural hazards as floods and resilience to climate change. Due to its transversal dimension water management remains a critical part of sustainable development and in January 2015, the World Economic Forum declared the water crisis as one of the top global risks. A water crisis is ultimately a management crisis that can be solved through the application of sound water and land management policies. In light of this situation, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved in September 2015 also set specific targets for water under Goal 6. The overall goal of SDG6 is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. This is amongst others to be achieved by implementing integrated water resources management (IWRM) at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate (cf. SDG 6.5).
The successful implementation of IWRM requires access to reliable data and information on critical issues. There is a growing awareness that EO data has the potential to serve these data needs especially in the context of International Financing Institutions (IFIs) and Official Developing Assistance (ODA) normally operating in regions where policies and management decisions are based on sparse and unreliable information.
This presentation will provide examples on how Earth Observation is supporting development projects globally in order to help countries better measure and manage their water resources and as support for the monitoring requirements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through practical examples in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it will be demonstrated how the new generation of freely accessible satellites can help project preparation, implementation and evaluation by providing large area monitoring information on surface water resources (including wetlands), agricultural land use and flood zones and with an unprecedented spatial detail and revisit time. The presentation will aim to reach beyond individual applications to put into context how EO can support the implementation and monitoring of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) initiatives in order protect, manage and restore land and water ecosystems and thereby ensure positive progress towards a number of targets in the 2030 agenda on Sustainable Development.

The aim of the SDGs pertains to the sustainability of human activities and the environment. The SDG 14 “Oceans” targets at the stability and sustainability of marine ecosystems and their resources. To quantify its first target, which refers to the prevention and the significant reduction of marine pollution of all kinds, 14.1.1 “Index of Coastal Eutrophication (ICEP) and Floating Plastic Debris Density” is introduced by UNEP. Currently, it is classified in Tier III, which means that the type of information needed is already defined, whereas the methodology and data sources for its estimation are not. It is composed of two sub-indicators: a. coastal eutrophication, and b. concentration of floating plastic.
According to the Oslo-Paris Convention, “eutrophication means the enrichment of water by nutrients causing an accelerated growth of algae and higher forms of plant life…”. The importance of this sub-indicator can be tracked as social, e.g. water areas dangerous for health and economic, e.g. fish/mussels die resulting to production losses, while it has also legislative support (Marine Strategy Framework Directive).
Currently, an indirect method is proposed with the use of EO techniques, which is widely used for the estimation of eutrophication: the calculation of chlorophyll-a concentration. Moreover, eutrophic areas are usually detected in coastal waters due to nutrient inputs from anthropogenic coastal and land activities. CMEMS uses EO data and in-situ measurements to model these types of information.
In this paper a novel automated methodology for the estimation of the Index of Coastal Eutrophication and the provision of trend-based geo-analytics through an online application platform is presented. It is addressed to the regions of Iberia-Biscay-Ireland Seas with the uptake of EO data and models for the first part, and for the second part the Hexagon Smart M.App is used, deployed on an online cloud-based platform tool.
The algorithm exploits CMEMS models of Phosphate-Nitrates-Silica nutrients, Chlorophyll-a, Dissolved Oxygen and Water Transparency and computes a weighted indicator that segments waterbodies into four categories: non-problem areas, potential problem areas (low), potential problem areas (high) and problem areas. The indicator is calculated with respect to the Contiguous Zones (24nm from the coast), as determined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while the threshold values for the water classification are adopted from the Water Framework Directive. The temporal range is aligned with that of the addressed CMEMS products, starting from 01-01-2016 up to today, while the suggested monthly ICEP provision is obtained by aggregating daily products. Results indicate each country’s percentile distribution (%) of eutrophication events. These events occur most often near high population density areas and river estuaries, and in shallow coastal waters during warm periods.
For the visualization and as support to the interpretation of the ICEP trends and alteration throughout time, the results are integrated into the Hexagon Smart M.App deployed on a cloud platform. A Smart M.App consists of an online targeted, lightweight map application, suitable for dynamic visualization of geospatial data through powerful business intelligence tools. With this application the user can “interact” with the map and tailor its analysis in order to display different types of relevant geo-analytics. On-the-fly visualization is performed, as the ICEP of the selected country is illustrated as time-series, thus an overall view of the current state and future trends is inspected. Moreover, another crucial tool for the SDG monitoring is the ICEP score per country visualized as graph. All included countries are contained in this graph, so the intercomparison of ICEP scores is easily implemented by the user.