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Marine foreshores are currently not included in water safety assessments and in levee design. River floodplains
are only managed to maximize river discharge capacity. However, foreshores and floodplains deliver several
services, such as increasing sedimentation, reducing erosion and attenuating waves that mitigate flood risk
by improving levee stability and lifetime. Including foreshores and floodplains in levee design and safety
assessments can result in considerable cost reductions for flood risk management.

The FAST (Foreshore Assessment using Space Technology) project aims to develop a new GMES/Copernicus downstream service
by developing products based on Sentinel data to gain spatial information on foreshore and floodplain
characteristics, such as morphology, sediment characteristics and vegetation properties. Necessary ground
referencing in combination with measurements on wave attenuation and erosion/deposition regimes will be
executed at eight characteristic case-study sites across Europe (Spain, Romania, United Kingdom and the
Netherlands). From the collected data general relationships between foreshore and floodplain characteristics
and flood risk mitigation properties will be derived and implemented in a GIS based software package. Software
calculates effects of foreshores and floodplains on hydraulic conditions derived from either satellite images or
engineering manuals. Effects of foreshores and floodplains on wave impact and bed stability are translated to
potential reduction in levee width and crest height. Software will be developed in close contact with various enduser
groups to ensure commercial uptake and long-term continuation of services. In this way, FAST provides
the first standardised tool for integrating levee-landscape interaction into cost efficient and safe flood risk
management strategies.