Coastal Sensitivity/Vulnerability Characterization and Adaptation Strategies: A Review

Coastal area constitutes a vulnerable environment and requires special attention to preserve ecosystems and human activities therein. To this aim, many studies have been devoted both in past and recent years to analyzing the main factors affecting coastal vulnerability and susceptibility. Among the most used approaches, the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) accounts for all relevant variables that characterize the coastal environment dealing with: (i) forcing actions (waves, tidal range, sea-level rise, etc.), (ii) morphological characteristics (geomorphology, foreshore slope, dune features, etc.), (iii) socio-economic, ecological and cultural aspects (tourism activities, natural habitats, etc.). Each variable is evaluated at each portion of the investigated coast, and associated with a vulnerability level which usually ranges from 1 (very low vulnerability), to 5 (very high vulnerability). Following a susceptibility/vulnerability analysis of a coastal stretch, specific strategies must be chosen and implemented to favor coastal resilience and adaptation, spanning from hard solutions (e.g., groins, breakwaters, etc.) to soft solutions (e.g., beach and dune nourishment projects), to the relocation option and the establishment of accommodation strategies (e.g., emergency preparedness)

some remarks about a community open source lagrangian pollutant transport and dispersion model

Nowadays fishes and mussels farming is very important, from an economical point of view, for the local social background of the Bay of Naples. Hence, the accurate forecast of marine pollution becomes crucial to have reliable evaluation of its adverse effects on coastal inhabitants' health. The use of connected smart devices for monitoring the sea water pollution is getting harder because of the saline environment, the network availability and the maintain and calibration costs2. To this purpose, we designed and implemented WaComM (Water Community Model), a community open source model for sea pollutants transport and dispersion. WaComM is a model component of a scientific workflow which allows to perform, on a dedicated computational infrastructure, numerical simulations providing spatial and temporal high-resolution predictions of weather and marine conditions of the Bay of Naples leveraging on the cloud based31FACE-IT workflow engine27. In this paper we present some remarks about the development of WaComM, using hierarchical parallelism which implies distributed memory, shared memory and GPGPUs. Some numerical details are also discussed. Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs

Characteristics and coastal effects of a destructive marine storm in the Gulf of Naples (southern Italy)

Destructive marine storms bring large waves and unusually high surges of water to coastal areas, resulting in significant damages and economic loss. This study analyses the characteristics of a destructive marine storm on the strongly inhabited coastal area of Gulf of Naples, along the Italian coasts of the Tyrrhenian Sea. This is highly vulnerable to marine storms due to the accelerated relative sea level rise trend and the increased anthropogenic impact on the coastal area. The marine storm, which occurred on 28 December 2020, was analyzed through an unstructured wind-wave coupled model that takes into account the main marine weather components of the coastal setup. The model, validated with in situ data, allowed the establishment of threshold values for the most significant marine and atmospheric parameters (i.e., wind intensity and duration) beyond which an event can produce destructive effects. Finally, a first assessment of the return period of this event was evaluated using local press reports on damage to urban furniture and port infrastructures

Rip current evidence by hydrodynamic simulations, bathymetric surveys and UAV observation

Abstract. The prediction of the formation, spacing and location of rip currents is a scientific challenge that can be achieved by means of different complementary methods. In this paper the analysis of numerical and experimental data, including RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft systems) observations, allowed us to detect the presence of rip currents and rip channels at the mouth of Sele River, in the Gulf of Salerno, southern Italy. The dataset used to analyze these phenomena consisted of two different bathymetric surveys, a detailed sediment analysis and a set of high-resolution wave numerical simulations, completed with Google EarthTM images and RPAS observations. The grain size trend analysis and the numerical simulations allowed us to identify the rip current occurrence, forced by topographically constrained channels incised on the seabed, which were compared with observations

Coastal marine data crowdsourcing using the Internet of Floating Things: Improving the results of a water quality model

n/

Satellite observations and in-situ measurements to monitor Maldivian atolls over time

The Maldives, whose land elevation is approximately 1 m above mean sea level, are often associated with the threat of rising sea levels. To evidence the flood exposure of small atolls belonging to the Maldivian archipelago, we analysed satellite measurements and in-situ environmental data. A comparison between the emerged land area, obtained from synthetic aperture radar imagery at a time span of about 41 months is performed, showing that very high resolution and long-Term images stack is needed to appreciate significant coastal changes. These preliminary results are discussed analysing the local sea wave and the sea level to evidence possible temporal trends and correlations

Sustainable use of marine resources through offshore wind and mussel farm co-location

tMarine Spatial Planning (MSP) can offer significant benefits in terms of economic conservation strategies,optimizing spatial planning and minimizing the impact on the environment. In this paper, we focusedon the application of multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) technique for co-locating offshore wind farms andopen-water mussel cultivation. An index of co-location sustainability (SI) was developed based on theapplication of MCE technique constructed with physical and biological parameters on the basis of remote-sensing data. The relevant physical factors considered were wind velocity, depth range, concerning thesite location for energy production, and sea surface temperature anomaly. The biological variables usedwere Chlorofill-a (as a measurement of the productivity) and Particle Organic Carbon (POC) concentration,in order to assess their influence on the probable benefits and complete the requirements of this man-agement framework. This SI can be easily implemented to do a first order selection of the most promisingareas to be more specifically studied in a second order approach based on local field data

Marine Spatial Planning Using High-Resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar Measurements

In this paper, we highlight the importance of high-resolution wind data on the application of multicriteria evaluation technique to colocate offshore wind farms and open-water mussel cultivations. An index of colocation sustainability (SI), based on an environmental information, is constructed using remote sensing data and taking into account both physical constraints (i.e., water depth and wind speed) and environmental data (i.e., chlorophyll-a, sea surface temperature anomaly, and particulate organic carbon). To verify the proposed methodology, five showcases are presented, where SI is evaluated considering potential installation sites in Kattegat, Denmark, using both low-resolution (LR) wind reanalysis maps related to the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Application data set and fine-resolution wind maps obtained by processing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Experimental results show that the availability of a reliable fine-resolution wind information is of great importance in coastal areas where the presence of the land and the isles limits the use of LR wind data