Objectives of the service
Coastal managers need reliable information on how dunes are changing because these natural barriers protect millions of people from coastal flooding. However, current monitoring methods rely heavily on field surveys and airborne measurements that are costly, infrequent, and often inconsistent across different regions. As a result, decision-makers lack timely information to detect erosion, assess storm impacts, and prioritize maintenance or restoration efforts.
Coastal Futures provides a satellite-based monitoring service that delivers frequent, high-resolution information on dune systems. Using very high-resolution satellite imagery and national elevation data, the platform automatically maps sand surfaces, tracks the position of the boundary between beach and dunes, and identifies areas where dunes are likely to change after storms. This information is provided by a methodology and monitoring platform with more than ten years of historical data, allowing users to analyze trends and compare conditions over time.
New satellite images are processed through an automated pipeline using machine learning to produce updated maps within days of each satellite pass. This approach enables several observations per year across entire coastlines, giving coastal managers a consistent, scalable, and cost-effective way to monitor dunes and support better coastal protection decisions.
Users and their needs
The main users of Coastal Futures are coastal management organisations responsible for maintaining dunes and protecting coastal communities. These include regional water authorities, national coastal agencies, and environmental organisations in the Netherlands, with growing interest from users in the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Belgium. In the Netherlands, several regional water authorities and national research organisations are already involved through pilots and collaborative projects.
These users manage coastal safety, nature conservation, and recreational areas. Their work requires reliable, up-to-date information on dune conditions, but current monitoring methods are often costly, fragmented, and infrequent.
Key user needs include:
- Quantitative monitoring of sand presence to assess dune health
- Comparison of historical and current data to understand long-term change
- Frequent data updates to identify trends and storm impacts
- Early indications of how new sand drift or notch locations may develop
- Intuitive visualization tools to support planning and discussion
- Monitoring of dune foot movement to support maintenance planning and permitting
The main challenge is delivering reliable, frequently updated, and easy-to-interpret information across large coastlines while keeping costs lower than traditional monitoring methods.
Service/ system concept
Coastal Futures gives coastal managers, water authorities, and environmental agencies continuous, high-resolution intelligence about sandy dune systems, without having to commission field surveys. Users access three main information products through a monitoring platform with more than ten years of data history:
Sand presence monitoring: automated detection and quantification of sand surfaces from Pleiades satellite imagery (~0.5 m resolution), delivered as time series including trend lines and seasonal variation.
Dune foot tracking: the landward boundary between beach and dune is extracted from annual LiDAR elevation data and shown as contour lines per year.
Post-storm erosion risk (in development): a qualitative assessment (high / medium / low likelihood) of dune erosion following storm events, based on before-and-after satellite image comparison.
Once deployed, users can inspect any location along monitored coastlines, compare satellite-derived maps across years, and identify where and when significant changes have occurred. The platform is designed for multiple user types, from basic visualization for policymakers to advanced analytical tools for experienced coastal engineers.
Space Added Value
Coastal Futures relies on Pleiades very high-resolution optical imagery (~0.5 m) as its core space asset, sourced through the Satellietdataportaal for the Netherlands region and Airbus OneAtlas for the Belgium region. This is combined with nationally collected LiDAR elevation data (AHN for the Netherlands, MOW-supplied data for Belgium) to derive dune foot positions. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 were evaluated for the erosion detection component but proved insufficient due to their coarser spatial resolution, the narrow erosion scarps formed during storms fall below their detection threshold.
The decisive added value of using Pleiades over conventional methods is the combination of spatial detail, temporal frequency, and coastline-scale coverage in a single automated workflow. Traditional monitoring relies on periodic field campaigns and annual LiDAR flights, which are expensive, infrequent, and difficult to scale. Pleiades delivers multiple observations per year across entire coastlines, processed automatically within days of a new satellite pass, at a cost substantially below that of equivalent ground surveys.
No direct competitor offering the same combination was identified (sub-meter optical imagery, machine learning segmentation, dune foot extraction, and a tailored multi-user platform).
Current Status
Achieved: Sand segmentation is fully operational for the Dutch coast. Dune foot profiles are live in the platform for both the Dutch (2016-2025) and Belgian coasts (2025). Three collaborative workshops were held, engaging 12+ organizations across the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Coastal Futures was also presented at the Sand Dune & Shingle Conference in Liverpool (September 2025). A spinoff pilot within the duration of Coastal Futures with Waternet is complete.
In progress: Dune erosion detection algorithm development and validation; automation and independent validation of the dune foot product.
Starting shortly: STOWA-led operationalization project in 2026, with at least three Dutch coastal water boards, focusing on flood safety applications and expansion of the service to the full dune system in the Netherlands.
Prime Contractor(s)
