Multi-disciplinary monitoring system for resilient management of coastal areas: the REMACO project

The southern coast of Sicily and the islands of the archipelagos of Malta are highly exposed to risks coming from the sea. Such coasts are subjected to fast erosion due to natural and anthropic causes which involve the failure of cliffs, the triggering of localized erosion and the possibility of flooding. The REMACO project is financed by the INTERREG Italia-Malta program and it aims at creating an integrated multidisciplinary monitoring system for coastal areas. In particular, it makes use of the models for the evaluation of flooding and coastal erosion due to the storms as well as the development and implementation of monitoring of sea waves (punctual and aerial) through the use of coastal monitoring networks. In addition, it capitalizes also from the geomorphological, sedimentological, and orthophotographic monitoring of over 130 Pocket Beaches (PBs), located in Sicily and Malta.

The project activities focus on cliff and PBs. The latter are small beaches limited by natural headlands, strongly jutting into the sea, free from direct sedimentary contributions that are not eroded from back-shore cliffs. Along the Maltese and Sicilian coasts are several PB, which depending on their isolation and level of exposure, preserve ecological niches of great value (Posidonia oceanica), and thus represent relic deposits, formed under different conditions from those currently experienced, suggesting a response naturally resilient to the effects of climatic changes. These beaches are prized by tourists but often suffer the impact of human pressure and trigger risks to the safety of the same users. It is proposed to map all the PB to create a remotely sensed monitoring platform, based on the identification of specific geomorphological and sedimentological indices and the evolution of beach-incident wave motion, in order to preserve this erosion-sensitive environmental niche and ensure continued tourist use. 

Ultimately, the REMACO project enhances the monitoring of both sandy and rocky coastlines to obtain useful information for possible alerts and to obtain data for management models. The data acquired, in the medium to long term, will allow different stakeholders who are responsible for the resilient management of the coasts, to adapt in the context of mitigating the effects of climate change and to also safeguard human life.