Sandy beach-dune systems make up a large part of coastal areas world wide. Their function as an eco-system as well as a protective barrier for human and natural habitat is under increased threat due to climate change. A thorough understanding of change processes at the sediment surface is essential to facilitate prediction of future development and management strategies to maintain their function. Especially slow and small scale processes happening over several days up to weeks at cm level, such as aeolian sand transport are difficult to identify and analyse. Permanent laser scanning (PLS) is a useful tool in the study and analysis of coastal processes as it captures a data representation of the evolution of the sediment surface over extended periods of time (up to several years) with high detail (at cm-dm level). The PLS data set considered for this study, consists of hourly acquired 3D point clouds representing the surface evolution of a section of the Dutch coast during three years. However, it is challenging to extract concrete information on specific change processes from the large and complex PLS data set. We use multiple hypothesis testing in order to reduce the PLS data set to a so-called inventory of trends, consisting of 12.8 million partial time series with associated rate of change and elevation. The inventory of trends proofs to be a suitable tool to identify natural processes such as storms and aeolian sand transport in our test area in the aeolian zone of a sandy beach-dune system on the Dutch coast. We identify these processes and provide a tool to derive summarising data from the complex PLS data set. We find that all partial time series identified as most likely representing aeolian sand transport, result in 1354 m³ of sand deposition in our study area over the course of three years. We also show a comparison with transects from JarKus data and find a correlation between anthropogenic activities and erosion in our test area with a correlation coefficient of 0.3.

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Coastal areas are sensitive ecosystems, which are important as natural habitat, recreational areas and for protection of the hinterland. Coastal monitoring is essential in the analysis and prediction of coastal development. Coastal monitoring has become more urgent due to climate change and its effects on sea level and frequency of storm events. Permanent laser scanning (PLS) provides a tool to acquire 3-dimensional point clouds of an area nearly continuously over extended periods of time. PLS bridges the gap between incidental, in-situ measurement campaigns with high spatial detail, and frequent monitoring via satellite data at lower spatial resolution. Methods to process the complex high-resolution permanent laser scanning data are needed to find and analyse the effects of geomorphological processes over extended periods of time and with high spatial detail. This dissertation deals with the development of methods for spatio-temporal data mining of large 4D data sets from permanent laser scanning for the application of coastal monitoring on sandy beaches.

Two data sets of hourly 3-dimensional point clouds, acquired over periods of six months and three years at two different locations on the Dutch coast were analysed, to identify and assess geomorphological dynamics at the sediment surface. Each data set contains up to 20 000 epochs capturing the dynamics of the sandy beaches in Kijkduin and Noordwijk.

In this thesis two methods are developed: the application of multiple hypothesis testing for the estimation of minimal detectable bias and the generation of a so-called inventory of trends, and the application of clustering algorithms for grouping elevation time series. The first method using multiple hypothesis testing provides a means to define the minimal detectable bias for an expected model behaviour of time series from permanent laser scanning. This method provides a new way to detect small but persistent and statistically significant changes in longer time series derived from 3-dimensional point clouds. Using multiple hypothesis testing allows to identify linear changes with slopes of 0.032 m/day and sudden changes in elevation of 0.031 m with a given discriminatory power of 80% and significance level of 5% in 24-hour time series.

In an additional step, multiple hypothesis testing is used to reduce the complex permanent laser scanning data set to an inventory of trends, which consists of linear pieces of time series, matching the predefined statistical models and corresponding parameters. This method is applied to find and analyse times and areas where specific processes such as storms, aeolian sand transport or bulldozer works occur. The inventory of trends is particularly effective for the detection of aeolian sand transport, which has been difficult to identify using other coastal observations because it causes small, gradual deformations at the sediment surface.

The second method uses clustering algorithms to identify areas which are subject to similar change patterns. These change patterns are then easily associated with underlying physical and anthropogenic processes, mostly tidal induced changes and bulldozer works.

In summary, the developed methods allow to effectively detect deformations on sandy beaches and establish their origins, such as storms, tides, anthropogenic activities or aeolian sand transport, with a resolution and detail that has not been achieved until now. These results allow further analysis and interpretation of geomorphological coastal processes. For instance, the analysis of bulldozer works in our study area leads to the conclusion, that not only buildings themselves, but also the associated human interventions on the sandy beach around each building have a significant impact on coastal morphology and possibly lead to increased erosion. @en

In the view of climate change, understanding and managing effects on coastal areas and adjacent cities is essential. Permanent Laser Scanning (PLS) is a successful technique to not only observe notably sandy coasts incidentally or once every year, but (nearly) continuously over extended periods of time. The collected point cloud observations form a 4D point cloud data set representing the evolution of the coast provide the opportunity to assess change processes at high level of detail. For an exemplary location in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, three years of hourly point clouds were acquired on a 1 km long section of a typical Dutch urban sandy beach. Often, the so-called level of detection is used to assess point cloud differences from two epochs. To explicitly incorporate the temporal dimension of the height estimates from the point cloud data set, we revisit statistical testing theory. We apply multiple hypothesis testing on elevation time series in order to identify different coastal processes, like aeolian sand transport or bulldozer works. We then estimate the minimal detectable bias for different alternative hypotheses, to quantify the minimal elevation change that can be estimated from the PLS observations over a certain period of time. Additionally, we analyse potential error sources and influences on the elevation estimations and provide orders of magnitudes and possible ways to deal with them. Finally we conclude that elevation time series from a long term PLS data set are a suitable input to identify aeolian sand transport with the help of multiple hypothesis testing. In our example case, slopes of 0.032 m/day and sudden changes of 0.031 m can be identified with statistical power of 80% and with 95% significance in 24-h time series on the upper beach. In the intertidal area the presented method allows to classify daily elevation time series over one month according to the dominating model (sudden change or linear trend) in either eroding or accreting behaviour.

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Sandy beaches are subject to changes due to multiple factors, that are both natural (e.g. storms) and anthropogenic. Great efforts are being made to monitor these ecosystems and understand their dynamics in order to assure their conservation. The identification of anthropogenic changes and its differentiation from natural ones is an important task for coastal monitoring. In this study, we present a methodology for the detection of anthropogenic changes in a coastal ecosystem by automatically detecting active bulldozers in continuous beach video data. PCA is used to highlight changes in consecutive images due to moving objects. Next, the YOLO object detection algorithm is used to identify the bulldozers in the change images. YOLO was specifically trained for the task, obtaining a precision of 0.94 and a recall of 0.81. An automatic tool was developed, and the process was carried out on two months of video data, consisting of approximately 19 000 images. The resulting information was compared with changes derived from 3D data obtained from a permanent laser scanner. The correlation among the results of the two methodologies was computed. For a validation area and daily time frame a correlation of 0.88 was obtained between the number of detected bulldozers and the area affected by changes in height larger than 0.3 m.

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The Earth's landscapes are shaped by processes eroding, transporting and depositing material over various timespans and spatial scales. To understand these surface activities and mitigate potential hazards they inflict (e.g., the landward movement of a shoreline), knowledge is needed on the occurrences and impact of these activities. Near-continuous terrestrial laser scanning enables the acquisition of large datasets of surface morphology, represented as three-dimensional point cloud time series. Exploiting the full potential of this large amount of data, by extracting and characterizing different types of surface activities, is challenging. In this research we use a time series of 2,942 point clouds obtained over a sandy beach in The Netherlands. We investigate automated methods to extract individual surface activities present in this dataset and cluster them into groups to characterize different types of surface activities. We show that, first extracting 2,021 spatiotemporal segments of surface activity using an object detection algorithm, and second, clustering these segments with a Self-organizing Map (SOM) in combination with hierarchical clustering, allows for the unsupervised identification and characterization of different types of surface activities present on a sandy beach. The SOM enables us to find events displaying certain type of surface activity, while it also enables the identification of subtle differences between different events belonging to one specific surface activity. Hierarchical clustering then allows us to find and characterize broader groups of surface activity, even if the same type of activity occurs at different points in space or time.

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In recent years, our knowledge of coastal environments has been enriched by remotely sensed data. In this research, we co-analyse two sensor systems: Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). To successfully extract information from a combination of different sensors systems, it should be understood how these interact with the common environment. TLS provides high-spatiotemporal-resolution information, but it has high economic costs and limited field of view. SAR systems, despite their lower resolution, provide complete, repeated, and frequent coverage. Moreover, Sentinel-1 SAR images are freely available. In the present work, Permanent terrestrial Laser Scanning (PLS) data, collected in Noordwijk (The Netherlands), are compared with simultaneous Sentinel-1 SAR images to investigate their combined use on coastal environments: knowing the relationship between SAR and PLS data, the SAR dataset could be correlated to beach characteristics. Meteorological and surface roughness have also been taken into consideration in the evaluation of the correlation between PLS and SAR data. A generally positive linear correlation factor up to 0.5 exists between PLS and SAR data. This correlation occurs for low- or moderate-wind-speed conditions, whilst no particular correlation has been highlighted for high wind intensity. Furthermore, a dependence of the linear correlation on the wind direction has been detected. @en

Coastal areas world wide are highly dynamic areas, subject to continuous deformation processes. Both natural and anthropogenic processes constantly cause changes at various spatial scales. Sandy beaches in the Netherlands fall under a regulation, according to which moving sand is permitted, if the volume change remains below a certain threshold. The threshold holds for volume changes within a cross section of 1 m width of the beach. The enforcement of this rule is currently labor intensive, because monitoring generally happens only on a yearly basis, or incidental and non-quantitative. Improved observation capabilities with remote sensing are advancing the supporting technology for this kind of regulations. Permanent laser scanning is a potential tool for monitoring and quantifying volume changes of a section of the beach. We develop and implement methodology to extract time series of volume change with respect to a reference date of 01-01-2020 covering January 2020 until the end of April 2020. The method is applied on point cloud data from a permanent laser scanner on the coast of Noordwijk, The Netherlands. We analyse the time series for incidents, where the threshold in volume change is passed, and find all shortest intervals during which the threshold is passed. Then we analyse potential underlying cause in order to support not only enforcement, but also evaluation of the current regulation. This will ultimately help to work towards a better understanding of the influence of small scale human activities on coastal development.

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Sandy coasts form the interface between land and sea and their morphologies are highly dynamic. A combination of human and natural forcing results in morphologic changes affecting both nature values and coastal safety. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is a technique enabling near-continuous monitoring of the changing morphology of a sandy beach-dune system with centimetre-order accuracy. In Kijkduin, The Netherlands, a laser scanner sampled one kilometre of coast at hourly intervals for about six months. This resulted in over 4,000 consecutive topographic scans of around one million points each, at decimetre-order point spacing. Analysis of the resulting dataset will offer new insights into the morphological behaviour of the beach-dune system at hourly to monthly time scales, ultimately increasing our fundamental scientific understanding of these complex geographic systems. It further provides the basis for developing novel algorithms to extract morphodynamic and geodetic information from this unique 4D spatiotemporal dataset. Finally, experiences from this TLS setup support the development of improved near-continuous 3D observation of both natural and anthropogenic scenes in general.

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The European beach-dune systems are under increasing pressure due to urbanization, beach tourism and the effects of climate change like rising sea level and increased storm intensity. Building with nature solutions (Stive et al., 2013) are advocated as an effective and adaptable approach to protect sandy coasts in the future. This approach however interacts with the increased human use of the beaches- which can have an adverse impact on the efficiency of the building with nature approach. Especially permanent structures influence the natural sand transport dynamics from the beach to the dunes and can have long lasting effects on dune development. To obtain more insight into the influence of buildings on longer term dune development a 3-months ‘Scanex 2020’ field campaign was conducted (Poppema et al., 2021) on Noordwijk beach (52.24 °N, 4.42 °E) to monitor the natural sand development around two sea containers (see Figure 1). In addition on a larger scale the dune development around a permanent beach pavilion was monitored for two years (from August 2019 till August 2021) within the CoastScan project (Vos et al., 2017) with a permanent laser scanner. @en

Given the considerable range of applications within the European Union Copernicus system, sustained satellite altimetry missions are required to address operational, science and societal needs. This article describes the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission that is designed to provide precision sea level, sea surface height, significant wave height, inland water heights and other products tailored to operational services in the ocean, climate, atmospheric and land Copernicus Services. Sentinel-6 provides enhanced continuity to the very stable time series of mean sea level measurements and ocean sea state started in 1992 by the TOPEX/Poseidon mission and follow-on Jason-1, Jason-2 and Jason-3 satellite missions. The mission is implemented through a unique international partnership with contributions from NASA, NOAA, ESA, EUMETSAT, and the European Union (EU). It includes two satellites that will fly sequentially (separated in time by 5 years). The first satellite, named Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base, USA on 21st November 2020. The satellite and payload elements are explained including required performance and their operation. The main payload is the Poseidon-4 dual frequency (C/Ku-band) nadir-pointing radar altimeter that uses an innovative interleaved mode. This enables radar data processing on two parallel chains the first provides synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing in Ku-band to improve the received altimeter echoes through better along-track sampling and reduced measurement noise; the second provides a Low Resolution Mode that is fully backward-compatible with the historical reference altimetry measurements, allowing a complete inter-calibration between the state-of-the-art data and the historical record. A three-channel Advanced Microwave Radiometer for Climate (AMR–C) provides measurements of atmospheric water vapour to mitigate degradation of the radar altimeter measurements. The main data products are explained and preliminary in-orbit Poseidon-4 altimeter data performance data are presented that demonstrate the altimeter to be performing within expectations.

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The advancement of permanently measuring laser scanners has opened up a wide range of new applications, but also led to the need for more advanced approaches on error quantification and correction. Time-dependent and systematic error influences may only become visible in data of quasi-permanent measurements. During a scan experiment in February/March 2020 point clouds were acquired every thirty minutes with a Riegl VZ-2000 laser scanner, and various other sensors (inclination sensors, weather station and GNSS sensors) were used to survey the environment of the laser scanner and the study site. Using this measurement configuration, our aim is to identify apparent displacements in multioral scans due to systematic error influences and to investigate data quality for assessment of geomorphic changes in coastal regions. We analyse scan data collected around two storm events around 09/02/2020 (Ciara) and around 22/02/2020 (Yulia) and derive the impact of heavy storms on the point cloud data through comparison with the collected auxiliary data. To investigate the systematic residuals on data acquired by permanent laser scanning, we extracted several stable flat surfaces from the point cloud data. From a plane fitted through the respective surfaces of each scan, we estimated the mean displacement of each plane with the respective root mean square errors. Inclination sensors, internal and external, recorded pitch and roll values during each scan. We derived a mean inclination per scan (in pitch and roll) and the standard deviation from the mean as a measure of the stability of the laser scanner during each scan. Evaluation of the data recorded by a weather station together with knowledge of the movement behaviour, allows to derive possible causes of displacements and/or noise and correction models. The results are compared to independent measurements from GNSS sensors for validation. For wind speeds of 10m/s and higher, movements of the scanner considerably increase the noise level in the point cloud data.

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Sandy shores worldwide suffer from coastal erosion due to a lack of sediment input and sea-level rise. In response, coastal sand nourishments are executed using ‘Building with Nature’ techniques (BwN), in which the sand balance is amplified and natural dynamics are instrumental in the redistribution of sand, cross- and alongshore. These nourishments contribute to the growth of beaches and dunes, serving various design objectives (such as flood safety, nature, and recreation). Nevertheless, human interference (such as buildings and traffic) along urbanized sandy shores may have significant, yet poorly understood, effects on beach and dune development. Better insight is required into the interplay of morphological, ecological and urban processes to support Aeolian BwN processes for dune formation and contribute to the sustainable design of urbanized coastal zones. This paper aims to bridge the gap between coastal engineering and urban design by formulating design principles for BwN along urbanized sandy shores, combining nourishments, natural dune formation and urban development on a local scale to strengthen the coastal buffer. The first part of the paper analyses sedimentation processes in the (built) sea-land interface and identifies spatial mechanisms that relate coastal occupation to dune formation. Hence a preliminary set of design principles is derived by manipulating wind-driven sediment transport for BwN dune formation after nourishment. In the second part of the paper, these principles are applied and contextualized in two case-studies to compare their capability for BwN in different coastal profiles: the vast, rural, geomorphologically high dynamic profile of a mega-nourishment (Sand Motor); versus the compact, highly urbanized, profile(s) of a coastal resort (Noordwijk). Conclusions reflect on the applicability of BwN design principles within different coastal settings (dynamics, urbanity) and spatial arrangements facilitating BwN dune formation.@en

Sandy coasts are constantly changing environments governed by complex, interacting processes. Permanent laser scanning is a promising technique to monitor such coastal areas and to support analysis of geomorphological deformation processes. This novel technique delivers 3-D representations of the coast at hourly temporal and centimetre spatial resolution and allows us to observe small-scale changes in elevation over extended periods of time. These observations have the potential to improve understanding and modelling of coastal deformation processes. However, to be of use to coastal researchers and coastal management, an efficient way to find and extract deformation processes from the large spatiotemporal data set is needed. To enable automated data mining, we extract time series of surface elevation and use unsupervised learning algorithms to derive a partitioning of the observed area according to change patterns. We compare three well-known clustering algorithms (k-means clustering, agglomerative clustering and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise; DBSCAN), apply them on the set of time series and identify areas that undergo similar evolution during 1 month.We test if these algorithms fulfil our criteria for suitable clustering on our exemplary data set. The three clustering methods are applied to time series over 30 d extracted from a data set of daily scans covering about 2 km of coast in Kijkduin, the Netherlands. A small section of the beach, where a pile of sand was accumulated by a bulldozer, is used to evaluate the performance of the algorithms against a ground truth. The k-means algorithm and agglomerative clustering deliver similar clusters, and both allow us to identify a fixed number of dominant deformation processes in sandy coastal areas, such as sand accumulation by a bulldozer or erosion in the intertidal area. The level of detail found with these algorithms depends on the choice of the number of clusters k. The DBSCAN algorithm finds clusters for only about 44% of the area and turns out to be more suitable for the detection of outliers, caused, for example, by temporary objects on the beach. Our study provides a methodology to efficiently mine a spatiotemporal data set for predominant deformation patterns with the associated regions where they occur.

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An increased preference for building with nature solutions to mitigate possible negative effects of predicted climate change urges to acquire additional knowledge on coastal variability and resilience. Permanent laser scanning is a new and promising tool to observe and analyse natural variations at short (i.e. hourly) timescales for extended periods of time (i.e. years). In order to establish an error estimate over both space and time, a six months period of daily laser scans obtained at Kijkduin was analysed. The scans were obtained from a permanent laser scan setup on top of a hotel. We provide an overview of possible spatiotemporal error sources and of errors associated with a permanent laser setups for this particular example data set. In addition, some quantitative insights in the data quality are derived by assessing the variability of several parameters in space and time. Our analysis shows, that we can establish possible errors due to deformations in the laser scanner set up as well as small changes in range to reference objects at larger distances. Analysis of ranges within the point cloud shows that the range changes over time are in the order of centimetres indicating minimal deformation of the point clouds over time.@en

Landslides endanger settlements and infrastructure in mountain areas across the world. Monitoring of landslides is therefore essential in order to understand and possibly predict their behavior and potential danger. Terrestrial laser scanning has proven to be a successful tool in the assessment of changes on landslide surfaces due to its high resolution and accuracy. However, it is necessary to classify the 3D point clouds into vegetation and bare-earth points using filtering algorithms so that changes caused by landslide activity can be quantified. For this study, three classification algorithms are compared on an exemplary landslide study site in the Oetz valley in Tyrol, Austria. An optimal set of parameters is derived for each algorithm and their performances are evaluated using different metrics. The volume changes on the study site between the years 2017 and 2019 are compared after the application of each algorithm. The results show that (i) the tested filter techniques perform differently, (ii) their performance depends on their parameterization and (iii) the best-performing parameterization found over the vegetated test area will yield misclassifications on non-vegetated rough terrain. In particular, if only small changes have occurred the choice of the filtering technique and its parameterization play an important role in estimating volume changes.

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Sandy beaches are highly dynamic areas affected by different natural and anthropogenic effects. Large changes, caused by a storm for example, are in general well-understood and easy to measure. Most times, only small changes, at the centimeter scale, are occurring, but these changes accumulate significantly over periods from weeks to months. Laser scanning is a suitable technique to measure such small signals, as it is able to obtain dense 3D terrain data at centimeter level in a time span of minutes. In this work we consider two repeated laser scan data sets of two different beaches in The Netherlands. The first data set is from around the year 2000 and consists of six consecutive yearly airborne laser scan data sets of a beach on Texel. The second data set is from 2017 and consists of 30 consecutive daily terrestrial scans of a beach near The Hague. So far, little work has been done on time series analysis of repeated scan data. To obtain a first grouping of morphologic processes, we propose to use a simple un-supervised clustering approach, k-means clustering, on de-leveled, cumulative point-wise time series. The results for both regions of interest, obtained using k=5 and k=10 clusters, indicate that such clustering gives a meaningful decomposition of the morphological laser scan data into clusters that exhibit similar change patterns. At the same time, we realize that the chosen approach is just a first step in a wide open topic of clustering spatially correlated long time series of morphological laser scan data as are now obtained by permanent laser scanning.@en