ENHANCE

Coastal zones comprise just 20% of the Earth’s surface, yet this transitional area between land and sea is of major environmental, economic, and social importance. However, they are also home to 45% of the entire human population. Given their exposure to anthropogenic and climate change pressures, they are currently one of the most threatened environments on Earth. ENHANCE will leverage Copernicus Marine Service to monitor marine biodiversity and coastal water preserving at-risk ecosystems. The project will adopt an One Health approach encompassing services for the impact assessment of water quality in biodiversity, public health, and the environment. More specifically, ENHANCE will engage all relevant stakeholders affecting and being affected by the degradation and evolution of coastal marine ecosystems to identify and analyze the stakeholder needs to support effective decision making for sustainable climate resilient coastal areas. Additionally, a robust data collection and fusion infrastructure will be built, for ENHANCE, to allow real-time data communication from a variety of information sources including Copernicus data, EGNSS services, citizen science, etc. The project will enable the development of new products, integrating Copernicus and Citizen Science Data services, to provide more dynamic information (both pressures and impacts) and support policy makers and businesses in sustainable coastal management. More specifically, ENHANCE will deliver 3 new products to analyse the urban, agricultural and climate extremes pressures in coastal areas, as well as their impacts following the One Health framework. ENHANCE will be validated in 2 case studies in the Mediterranean; on Barcelona's urban beach and Pagasitikos Gulf. These two areas were chosen because of the touristic and anthropogenic pressures of Barcelona’s ecosystem and the latter because of the high climate change pressures resulting from the recent floods in the region of Thessaly.