The evaluation of the coastal hazard and vulnerability caused by storm conditions is an important issue related to coastal flooding and erosion. Although these topics have been widely tackled by past research, they cannot be avoided, but need to be carefully managed by local authorities in order to limit damage to coastal infrastructure, to protect human life, habitats and sensitive species. Usually, this issue is tackled through common approaches at the regional scale. This paper illustrates the first steps of a research project aimed at assessing coastal hazard and vulnerability to wave-induced flooding at the national scale. In order to apply the method to the national scale, it is necessary to select a suitable dataset. This has to be consistent with the whole application area, concerning its spatial distribution, reliability and availability. Thus, one of the aims of this project is to perform a comparative analysis using data available at the national and local scale. The analysis was performed for the area of Montalto di Castro (Tyrrhenian Sea) by using datasets with different spatial resolutions. The results revealed that the use of low resolution data does not significantly affect the estimated nearshore wave features, while the wave runup in underestimated by about 25%. This underestimation influences also the vulnerability and hazard assessments. In particular, the vulnerability is conservatively assessed if low resolution data are used. On the other hand, the hazard is conservatively assessed when low resolution data are used only if the wave runup is amplified by considering the 25% underestimation. The results presented herein can be extended to other sites with the same general features (i.e., microtidal and dissipative coastal stretches).

This paper presents a novel set of water quality indexes to identify the area potentially affected by point sources of bacterial pollution in coastal bathing waters. The indexes, developed in the framework of the CADEAU service, are evaluated on the results of a modelling system based on the integration of a high-resolution ocean model, remote sensing observations and in situ monitoring data for the northern Adriatic Sea. In particular, the system is a downscaling of the Mediterranean Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service and exploits data produced within the Bathing Waters Directive, the Water Framework Directive and the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive to create added value products. The aim of the proposed indexes is to support the identification of areas of influence for bathing waters by identifying the potential threat from point sources of bacterial pollution, both in standard conditions and peculiar events such as a total bypass of wastewater treatment plants. The results for the Chioggia Municipality case study show the potential of the indexes to significantly improve the geographical identification and quantitative evaluation of the impacts of bacterial pollution sources on bathing waters, facilitating the design of mitigation measures. The proposed methodology represents a new management approach to support local authorities in defining the area of influence within the water bathing profile through the proper characterization of the point sources of bacterial pollution.

According to the global growth of the “Blue economy”, coastal zones are under pressure from both land and marine side economic activities. The fragmentation of sectorial interests and legislation along the coasts has led to the need for bridging knowledge (data/information and methods/tools) and governance (decision-makers at every level) in order to ensure sustainable economic development and social and ecosystem resilience. This poses the need for an interaction process that associates user needs to the European and national legislative framework to create a policy-oriented demand of Copernicus Earth Observation services in coastal areas. Such goals need a strong and effective system to monitor compliance and to assess the progress of the legislation. This study aims at identifying potential gaps in the current Copernicus product offer for the monitoring of the coastal sector through the elicitation of stakeholder requirements. The methodology is applied to the Italian landscape of users, but it is scalable at European level. The results provide a clear overview of the coastal user requirements, highlighting the common need of integrated information for the management, and represents the basis for defining the coastal services.

In recent years increasing attention has been paid to environmental effects that may result from marine dredging and disposal operations. In general, the fine-grained fraction of handled sediments can be dispersed far from the intervention site as a turbidity plume, depending on the specific site and operational parameters. Starting from a literature review, this paper suggests standards for estimating and characterizing the sediment source term, for setting up far-field modeling studies and analyzing numerical results, with the aim of optimizing, also from an economic point of view, the different project, execution and monitoring phases. The paper proposes an integrated modeling approach for simulating sediment dispersion due to sediment handling operations in different marine-coastal areas (off-shore, near-shore and semi-enclosed basins). Attention is paid to the characterization of sediment source terms due to different operational phases (removal, transport and disposal). The paper also deals with the definition of accuracy level of modeling activities, with regard to the main physical processes characterizing the different marine–coastal areas and to the type of environmental critical issues near the intervention site (if any). The main relationships between modeling and monitoring are given for the different design and management phases to support the selection of appropriate technical alternatives and monitoring actions and to ensure the environmental compliance of the proposed interventions.

In recent decades, the world’s population is progressively shifting towards coastal areas, and it is estimated that it could reach 1 billion by 2050. On the other hand, meteocean forcings show increasing modification in terms of the occurrence and frequency of energetic events related to climate change trends. Then, the definition of adaptation strategies is crucial to managing coastal areas, especially in the most densely populated or highly valued tourist and environmental areas. Meaningful long-term strategies should then be based on quantitative estimation of future scenarios in a changing climate. Although most of the studies in the literature focus on extreme events, this paper aims to assess, through synthetic indicators, whether and how average and mild energy conditions related to wave climate will vary considering the current situation compared to future projections. The study is based on the analysis of wave data. The projection of average and mild energy conditions can indeed influence, just for example, the long-term morphodynamics of sandy beaches and the quality of bathing waters. Data extracted from the Copernicus database are considered. The methodology has been applied to the case of Sardinia island at a regional scale. Then, the aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, a method is proposed to evaluate the variation of average and mild wave conditions; on the other hand, it aims to apply the method to the case study of the Sardinia coastal area to highlight its feasibility. Results confirm that variations are expected. In the analyzed case study, it emerges that, on average, the long-term evolution of the wave climate shows a tendency toward intensification, while a decrease in the frequency of calm conditions is estimated. The average annual number of events undergoes an increase. Moreover, changes in wave directional sectors are observed, which, from being unimodal, are estimated to exhibit bimodal characteristics in particular on the west coast of the island.