Selected Papers from the 2018 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea

This Special Issue is devoted to recent developments in instrumentation and measurement techniques applied to the marine field. ¶The sea is the medium that has allowed people to travel from one continent to another using vessels, even today despite the use of aircraft. It has also been acting as a great reservoir and source of food for all living beings. However, for many generations, it served as a landfill for depositing conventional and nuclear wastes, especially in its deep seabeds, and we are assisting in a race to exploit minerals and resources, different from foods, encompassed in it. Its health is a great challenge for the survival of all humanity since it is one of the most important environmental components targeted by global warming. ¶ As everyone may know, measuring is a step that generates substantial knowledge about a phenomenon or an asset, which is the basis for proposing correct solutions and making proper decisions. However, measurements in the sea environment pose unique difficulties and opportunities, which is made clear from the research results presented in this Special Issue

A Combined Approach of Field Data and Earth Observation for Coastal Risk Assessment

The traditional approach for coastal monitoring consists in ground investigations that are burdensome both in terms of logistics and costs, on a national or even regional scale. Earth Observation (EO) techniques can represent a cost-effective alternative for a wide scale coastal monitoring. Thanks to the all-weather day/night radar imaging capability and to the nationwide acquisition plan named MapItaly, devised by the Italian Space Agency and active since 2010, COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) constellation is able to provide X-band images covering the Italian territory. However, any remote sensing approach must be accurately calibrated and corrected taking into account the marine conditions. Therefore, in situ data are essential for proper EO data selection, geocoding, tidal corrections and validation of EO products. A combined semi-automatic technique for coastal risk assessment and monitoring, named COSMO-Beach, is presented here, integrating ground truths with EO data, as well as its application on two different test sites in Apulia Region (South Italy). The research has shown that CSK data for coastal monitoring ensure a shoreline detection accuracy lower than image pixel resolution, and also providing several advantages: low-cost data, a short revisit period, operational continuity and a low computational time