Innovative technologies for safer European coasts in a changing climate
THESEUS is the largest Integrated Project within coastal risk assessment and mitigation funded by the European Commission and consists of 31 partner institutes. The project is developing a systematic approach to deliver both a low-risk coast for human use and healthy coastal habitats for evolving coastal zones subjected to multiple factors.
The THESEUS consortium is working towards an operational Decision Support System (a DSS) which will allow decision makers to use real data and data models to identify and solve problems regarding coastal defence. The THESEUS-DSS is a software tool which will help coastal managers choose the best combination of mitigation measures for a given site. A preliminary test version has already been developed.
During the 18th Hydraulics and Hydraulic Engineering Conference in Brescia, Italy (September 10-15th), Prof. Leopoldo Franco from University of Rome 3, was invited to hold a lecture about "New research frontiers in Coastal Engineering". The lecture elaborated some recent trends in coastal research and presented the objectives, methodologies and results from the THESEUS project as some of the most significant ongoing research at national scale.
Salt marsh vegetation and mudflat dynamics in the Western Scheldt Estuary through Remote Sensing
Monitoring transitional environments is a fundamental requirement for developing future scenarios of climate change. The intertidal zones of estuarine and coastal areas are most exposed to impacts, and because of their inaccessibility and highly dynamic and heterogeneous nature, Remote Sensing is regarded as the best alternative to gather information over vast areas of these habitats.
EID-Mediterranée has created a GIS database of the THESEUS study sites, available to all THESEUS-project partners. They also created a .kml file showing the distribution of coastal dunes for European countries on Google Earth.
The THESEUS Wiki-Portal, embedded in the Coastal and Marine Wiki has been launched to improve the visibility of the results from THESEUS research. This portal includes information from the THESEUS study sites and gets updated by the THESEUS project partners.
