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24 st / March 2015 www.sea-technology.com large, woody mangrove trees have very different energy attenuation prop- erties compared to small, sparse tidal marsh plants. The position of a habitat type in relation to tidal elevation, the low or high intertidal, is also critical to deciding its impact in different hydrodynamic scenarios. Together these factors help determine the impact of waves, as well as long-term sedi- ment dynamics and thus shoreline erosion. A number of studies have examined the mech- anisms by which vegetation interacts with hydrodynam- ics, and in particular tidal marshes and wave attenuation. However, the critical biophysical properties of the habitats responsible for attenuation are not always clear. Hence, al- though a large amount of information exists, translating this into a product that can be used in evaluating food defense/ coastal protection schemes is complex. This is the essence of the proposed service FAST is developing, as explained by Mindert de Vries, project leader: "FAST aims to make it quantifable and controllable for end-users to include the services provided by vegetated foreshores into nature-based food defense designs." vative solutions to mitigate exposure is a very valuable endeavor. In response, a number of international and national agencies have launched specifc policy initiatives related to food risks and coastal pro- tection, including the United Nations Environ- ment Program, World Bank, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the European Com- mission. In Europe, projects such as Eurosion, Micore and Theseus, to name but a few, have contributed to food-risk policy, as will ongoing projects such as Risc-Kit and Pearl. However, none of these projects have been specifcally designed to harness the power of Copernicus— until now. Foreshore Assessment using Space Technology, or FAST (www.fast-space-project. eu), led by Mindert de Vries of the Dutch inde- pendent institute for applied research, Deltares, has the ambitious aim of developing down- stream services using Copernicus to support cost-effective, nature-based shoreline protection against fooding and ero- sion. Downstream Services for Shoreline Protection Vegetated foreshores, such as tidal marshes and man- groves, naturally defend against coastal fooding and ero- sion. This means natural coastal ecosystems can play an important role in reducing food risks and are increasingly becoming part of cost-effective food defense solutions. The water storage and friction capacity of different habi- tats is related to their structural properties; for example, (Photo Credit: Iris Möller) Waves breaking near the reed margin in Jurilovca, Romania. (Inset) Flow chart representing poten- tial parameters derived from the Sentinels 1 and 2 for use in the development of the FAST down- stream service. (Image Credit: van der Wal et al, 2014)