The main objectives of the ISLA project are to:
- assemble a dynamic and user – friendly database that will incorporate the spatial characteristics of the island beaches of the Aegean Archipelago, using readily available (web-based) remote sensing information;
- assess the range of potential retreat of these beaches under different scenarios of short- and long-term sea level rise through the use of suitable ensembles of parametric and numerical morphodynamic models;
- develop/evaluate a low-cost system of monitoring of beach morphodynamics, that can provide insights into the complex relationships between coastal processes and beach morphology and validate the utilized morphodynamic models in the field;
- assess the accuracy/sensitivity of remote-sensed images that provide information on beach spatial characteristics (e.g. beach width), through specifically targeted and detailed ground truth experiments;
- study the dynamics and assess the impacts of the riverine sediment supply at representative coastal drainage basins and beaches of the Aegean Archipelago; and
- assess the socio-economic impacts of coastal erosion due to storm surge-induced and long-term sea level rise on representative beaches of the Greek Archipelago and suggest effective beach protection policies/measures.
Expected benefits of the ISLA project in education/academia include: (i) enrichment of the national human resource of coastal scientists/engineers through training of several young researchers in conventional and innovative techniques in numerical modelling, remote sensing and image processing and the collection/analysis of high frequency observations; and (ii) improve our knowledge/advance research in beach processes and morphodynamic modelling, the monitoring/modeling of small island drainage basins, the evaluation of coastal capital and its losses due to climatic changes etc. In addition, the project results will benefit both the National Administration and the general public through the creation, for the first time in Greece, of a web-based comprehensive inventory of the Aegean Archipelago beaches, including an assessment of their climate-driven coastal erosion/flooding risk. Finally, the low-cost AOMS might prove to be a valuable tool for coastal scientist/engineers and planners, both in Greece and abroad, having also some commercial applications.
