Satellite data for next generation information tools for healthy and safe seas, coasts and river deltas

Published: 30 May 2016

In the coming decades, the majority of the world’s population will live in an urban environment, mostly situated in coastal areas. For these growing urban delta populations, good water is essential for their subsistence, but water also forms a threat (floods, draughts, salinity problems and poor water quality). Due to climate change, these problems may increase.

Information from satellite remote sensing data

Satellite remote sensing , or earth observation, provides a wide range of data that can be converted to relevant information on climate, weather, water, soil and land use to help stakeholders to cope with these new challenges. The European Space Solutions Conference in The Hague from Monday 30th May until June 3 2016 will address these opportunities. At this ESS conference, Deltares will present at various workshops and sessions that relate to space-based information services for water and climate in delta regions: on land, at the coastline and for offshore marine monitoring and maritime activities.

Valuable reference and validation material

Deltares sees great potential in the Copernicus Services. The operational modelling data are useful to feed our global and the regional scale forecasting systems. Also, the ever-growing model and observational data archive of the various services offers valuable reference and validation material for the analyses in many international projects. Next to the Copernicus-based data from the Sentinel satellites, Deltares is integrating other satellite data in marine, coastal and inland water information tools. Next to applying space-borne data in tools and services, we for example also explore the application of the ocean colour satellite observation data to make the marine monitoring by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment more effective and efficient.

Water Map South East Australia, based on satellite data

More information (Deltares speakers at the ESS Conference)

Meinte Blaas (marine monitoring) , Mindert de Vries (coastal tools), Ghada el Serafy (ecosystem services and water resource management).