Sea-level rise and the ICJ climate ruling: Understanding risks, planning action

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On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, issued its first advisory opinion on climate change, “Obligations of States in respect of climate change”, marking a historic shift in international legal responsibilities. It affirmed what millions have long demanded: climate change threatens our very survival, and high-emitting states can and must be held accountable.

This ruling is more than a legal milestone. It’s a powerful tool for global advocacy, one that people, communities, and policymakers can use to demand stronger, science-based climate action from their governments.

What did the World Court (ICJ) rule on climate change?

  • Climate change is classified as an “urgent and existential threat, and States have treaty-based and customary international law obligations to prevent significant environmental harm.
  • The court affirmed that the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a fundamental human right, critical for the enjoyment of other human rights.
  • States may be held responsible for inaction, including failing to regulate emissions from the private sector (such as fossil fuel companies), with potential consequences including cessation, non-repetition, and full reparations if causation is established.
  • Small island states—and by extension any climate-vulnerable region—are recognised as having distinct legal claims due to their heightened vulnerability and potential loss of statehood under sea-level rise.

The ruling gained remarkable legitimacy, with participation from 96 States and 11 international organisations during public hearings, making it the largest case in ICJ history, and was adopted unanimously by the 15 judges.

CoCliCo’s role: Supporting adaptation to the risks underlined by the ICJ

While the ICJ’s advisory opinion focuses on states’ legal obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent significant environmental harm, sea-level rise is one of the clearest and most impactful consequences of climate inaction.

This is where CoCliCo comes in.

Translating urgency into coastal risk understanding

CoCliCo reinforces the ICJ’s core message, that climate change is an urgent and existential threat, by offering a practical lens into what this threat means at the coastal level.

  • Our platform helps you explore how rising seas will affect European coastlines, both today and under future climate scenarios.
  • By making coastal flood risk data accessible, CoCliCo supports preparedness and planning, turning long-term global obligations into tangible local insights.

Helping stakeholders understand and take action on coastal risk

Whether you’re a planner, policymaker, researcher, or community advocate, CoCliCo enables you to:

  • Visualise coastal risk under different climate and socio-economic scenarios, readily available on the web platform.
  • Assess adaptation options like coastal protection, urban development limits, or managed retreat.
  • Use user-informed analysis, called “user stories”, to understand how sea-level rise could unfold—and how adaptation strategies can be evaluated.
  • Dive deeper into local analysis using our risk and mapping models and data, directly from the Workbench.

Our platform, workbench, and data complement legal and policy efforts by making the physical implications of climate change—particularly sea-level rise—clear and actionable.

Access the platform here: https://platform.coclicoservices.eu/

Use the handbook to learn more about using the platform, performing further analysis through our Workbench, or using our data directly: https://www.openearth.nl/coclico-workbench/

Final thoughts

The ICJ has confirmed that preventing environmental harm is a legal obligation. At CoCliCo, we see this as a call not only for emissions reduction, but also for proactive adaptation to the impacts that are already underway, including sea-level rise.

Our platform is one step in helping you meet that challenge by making coastal risk visible, understandable, and planable.

Explore CoCliCo and see how data-driven adaptation planning can complement global climate responsibilities.

Explore our platform now

Europe can strengthen science diplomacy to protect common goods and shared responsibilities

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Science is fundamental. It drives human progress and provides solutions essential for addressing our shared challenges. It transcends borders with its universal rigour and factual approach to problem-solving. Yet, despite its factual basis, science faces threats from misuse, neglect, and the gravest danger of all, abuse that undermines knowledge production.

In the United States, the current administration has taken steps to undermine independent scientific institutions, such as pulling out of key international climate science efforts, restricting research projects mentioning a list of keywords such as “equity” or “female”, dismissing scientists and fostering a climate of fear and suspicion in sustainability sciences.  The United States’ retreat from science and science diplomacy challenges our collective capacity to make decisions based on facts informed by robust scientific evidence. It compromises the irreplaceable role of science in achieving global, coordinated climate action to achieve climate-resilient development.

In the United States, scientific institutions independent of political power are under threat as never before in Western democracies. Yet, Europe too is facing attempts to weaken the role of science and facts in policymaking. The book Climate Obstruction Across Europe, published by the Climate Social Science Network, explains how climate obstruction tactics, from denial to delay, are thriving. These climate obstruction tactics are fundamentally anti-democratic as they distort public discourse, impede transparent decision-making, and deny citizens access to accurate information. 

Empowering policy through science for a stronger Europe

We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in the U.S. whose scientific institutions are most immediately under threat. We know statements of support are not enough, and aim to continue taking action however we can to ensure that science remains a guiding force in policy decisions.

Europe has an opportunity to take a stand. The recent European Framework for Science Diplomacy report and commentary published in Nature underscores that Europe can promote peace, resilient development and human health and wellbeing by integrating science more deeply into policymaking. Science diplomacy—using scientific collaboration to bridge geopolitical divides—is a key instrument to foster this ambition.

The European Union and member states have the capacity to strengthen the role of independent experts and scientists in policy discussions, to ensure that decisions on climate, health, wellbeing, biodiversity and technology are firmly rooted in evidence rather than political whims.

A commitment to science and each other

We cannot afford to be passive while scientific integrity is under threat. As a cluster of scientists involved in European projects on risks and adaptation to climate change, we call on policymakers, research institutions, and businesses to defend science from political and industrial manipulation. This requires strengthening the mechanisms and instruments that safeguard independent experts and scientific institutions from political influence, while ensuring a transparent public debate upstream of decision-making. By equipping itself with the means to strengthen science and science diplomacy, Europe can create a desirable future that rejects obscurantism and oppression.

We can only address climate change, global health and biodiversity crises, as well as social and technological advancements through science. Questioning its validity undermines the foundation of our collective progress and the hope for a better future.

To protect science diplomacy, we need to protect science itself.

This letter is based on the opinions of the scientists and professionals working on CoCliCo, PROTECT, and SCORE projects. The opinions expressed do not reflect those of the European Commission or the project partner organisations. Signed by:

1. Gonéri Le Cozannet, researcher and coordinator of the European research project CoCliCo

2. Salem Gharbia, researcher and coordinator of the European research project SCORE

3. Angélique Melet, researcher in the European research project CoCliCo

4. Elco Koks, researcher and coordinator of the European research project MIRACACoCliCo

5. Gianmaria Sannino, researcher in the European research project CoCliCo

6. Charalampos Skoulikaris, researcher in the European research project CoCliCo

7. Rémi Thiéblemont, researcher in the European research project CoCliCo

8. Jochen Hinkel, researcher in the European research project CoCliCo

9. Jacinta Hamley, Campaign Lead for Vizzuality and WP7 lead of CoCliCo

10. Susana Romao, Portfolio & Partnerships Lead for Vizzuality and WP7 lead of CoCliCo

11. Pauline Douillac, communication officer in the European research project CoCliCo

12. Bruno Buongiorno Nardelli, Ricercatore presso, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

13. Nicola Horsburgh, PhD Researcher, Coastal adaptation

A collaborative exploration of future coastal adaptation in the Fens, England.

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The Fens, the UK’s largest coastal lowland, face a pressing climate challenge. Strategically crucial for national food production and home to a growing population and economy, this region is particularly vulnerable to climate risks like sea-level rise (SLR), coastal and fluvial flooding, drought, and heat stress. Over the centuries, the Fens have transformed into an engineered landscape, reliant on drainage channels, flood defences, and tidal barriers to manage water. But with large areas of the region below sea level and sea levels projected to rise by up to one metre by the end of the century, the risks are mounting.

In collaboration with the Environment Agency-funded Fens Climate Change Risk Assessment Project, which includes the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Sayers & Partners, the UK Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, and the University of East Anglia, CoCliCo has supported the crucial in-depth climate risk assessment for the Fens and exploration of alternative high-level adaptation future storylines. The case study highlights the interconnectedness of climate risks, illustrating how rising seas, drought, and biodiversity loss intertwine to challenge the future of this vital region. But it’s not all doom and gloom as this case study also offers hope, showcasing innovative adaptation solutions that can help the Fens thrive despite the mounting challenges.

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The myriad of risks that could impact the Fens as global mean surface temperature increases, based on the climate risk modelling presented in this report. The arrows highlight when risks may be faced based on warming levels of 2°C, 3°C and 4°C are reached, reported by the Carbon Brief (2020) and IPCC (2023) and assuming a high emission future. Even if current pledges of international government action are considered and assumed to be delivered, temperatures rise beyond 2°C and potentially 3°C by the end of the century, with continued increases after that date (Climate Action Tracker, 2023).

Tackling complex climate risks through a systems lens

A key takeaway from the Fens case study is the need to view the region’s climate risks through a systems lens. The Fens’ challenges are deeply interconnected. Sea-level rise, flooding, water scarcity, and agricultural impacts all affect one another, meaning that the solutions must be similarly integrated. By considering the various climate and socio-economic factors, CoCliCo has provided an adaptable framework for adaptation that can guide future actions.

Through high-resolution modelling and data from climate projections (including UK Met Office UKCP18 data), the study not only analyses the risks of flooding and drought but also considers their cascading effects on agriculture, biodiversity, and community health. The study’s integration of the pan-European CoCliCo framework offers a scalable tool for stakeholders to build adaptive strategies that are both local and collaborative.

Where is the Fens – From Sayers and Partners
Coastal flood risk in 2080s assuming continuation of current adaptation policies using the Future Flood Explorer (Sayers and Partners).

The Role of CoCliCo in shaping the future of adaptation

The Fens case study has significantly contributed to developing the CoCliCo platform. By combining detailed local risk assessments with the CoCliCo toolset, the study underscores the potential for tailored, downscaled solutions. It shows how CoCliCo’s platform can help users explore multiple adaptation futures, from business-as-usual to managed retreat locally, empowering stakeholders to make informed decisions that safeguard the Fens’ future.

This work also highlights the importance of ongoing collaboration between stakeholders, including local governments, flood risk management authorities, agricultural communities, and environmental agencies. By working together, these diverse groups can ensure that the Fens remain resilient, adaptive, and sustainable in the face of climate change.

Lessons for global climate adaptation

The lessons from the Fens extend beyond this region and offer valuable insights for coastal lowlands worldwide. As the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, the need for integrated adaptation strategies becomes ever clearer. This case study provides a model for other regions facing similar challenges, offering a comprehensive framework for assessing risks, identifying opportunities, and making decisions that balance environmental, social, and economic needs.

Key recommendations for stakeholders

  1. Collaborate across sectors: The interconnected risks in the Fens require an integrated approach. Flood risk management, agricultural communities, and local governments must work together to create solutions that address the full scope of challenges.
  2. Plan for long-term risks: While immediate climate threats must be addressed, long-term sea-level rise projections (up to 3m beyond 2100) should shape current and future planning.
  3. Invest in resilience now: The window for action is closing. Adaptation efforts made today will pay off in the long term, preventing higher costs and greater damage down the road.
  4. Use local data for global solutions: High-resolution, localised climate data is crucial. The CoCliCo framework enables downscaled analyses that offer actionable insights, ensuring that local needs are met within a broader climate adaptation strategy.
Decision-making matrix for the Fens, by UEA and Sayers and Partners

Stakeholder Engagement and Support

Throughout the project, engagement with key stakeholders has been integral. The team collaborated with organisations like Anglian Water, Lincolnshire County Council, and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, ensuring the results met the user community’s needs. These partners are now using the findings to shape future flood resilience strategies, ensuring the Fens’ continued role in national food production.

Feedback from stakeholders, such as Dr. Robin Price from Anglian Water and Amy Shaw from the Environment Agency, emphasises the importance of immediate action. Their commitment to securing a thriving future for the Fens underscores the urgency of these adaptation efforts.

Looking ahead:

The future of the Fens depends on the collective action of its stakeholders. With climate change already affecting the region, a forward-thinking approach is essential to protect its people, environment, and economy. The CoCliCo project has provided the tools, data, and framework needed to navigate this complex challenge, offering a path forward for the Fens and beyond.

For more information, visit the CoCliCo project’s resources, and stay connected via the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Future Fens Integrated Adaptation initiatives.

Authorship

Thank you, Katie Jenkins, Paul Sayers, Sam Carr, and Robert Nicholls, for developing this case study in collaboration with the Environment Agency Fens team and the many active stakeholders. You can read the full risk assessment report here.

Funding support

The Environment Agency Fens Programme has supported the main Fens studies. Support funding has been provided through CoCliCo to help provide insights into coastal climate change and alternative adaptation stories. 

Stay updated:

New research: Enabling coastal analytics at planetary scale

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Coastal science is evolving rapidly, driven by open satellite data, cloud platforms, and models that nowadays can achieve comparable resolutions for local and broad-scale studies. Altogether, this allows us to better understand and manage coastal risks at scales that were unimaginable just a decade ago. But while the resolution of the analyses increases, so does the challenge of managing, accessing, and analyzing these massive datasets efficiently.

At Deltares, we explored how cloud technology enables coastal analyses at scale. Our work introduces the Global Coastal Transect System (GCTS), a foundational dataset of over 11 million transects at 100-meter resolution that supports scalable coastal analytics and is excellent for regional comparisons. 

Our work aims to show that if the coastal community wants to address urgent challenges at scale—without sacrificing accuracy or resolution—it probably has to embrace cloud technology.

Key highlights from the study

  • Position: Addressing global coastal challenges requires scalable data repositories, tools and models
  • Foundational dataset: GCTS provides a global dataset of over 11 million coastal transects at 100-meter resolution, ideal for coastal analytics and regional comparisons.
  • Scalability: Cloud-native methods can map coastal waterlines at 50 kilometers per second—up to 700 times faster than traditional approaches—enabling high-resolution analyses that scale from local applications to broad-scale studies.
  • Critical findings: One-third of the world’s first kilometer of coastline lies below 5 meters—areas often vulnerable to accelerating sea-level rise—highlighting the need for climate adaptation planning. 
  • Next steps: As a community, we must work together to establish the foundations for scalable, transparent, and reusable coastal research.

Cloud technology to elevate coastal science 

Cloud technology already plays a critical role in modern science—particularly in fields that rely on large datasets such as satellite data catalogs. It is becoming equally crucial in coastal science as global flood maps and other coastal datasets are increasingly produced at resolutions previously reserved for local studies.

An essential component of this shift is using cloud-optimized data formats, such as Cloud-Optimised GeoTIFF (COG), (Geo)Parquet, and Zarr. These formats allow selective access to specific parts of a dataset, eliminating the need to download or load the entire file into memory. Like streaming a movie scene rather than downloading the entire film, cloud-optimised formats enable efficient access to large geospatial datasets.

The performance gains are substantial. In one of our benchmark tests, a common GIS task—retrieving data for a specific region of interest (e.g., the Basque Country)—took nearly 20 minutes using traditional formats like Shapefiles or GeoPackages. The same task was completed in under seven seconds with a cloud-native setup and could run on a much smaller computer. 

Cloud systems are also designed to scale. Instead of relying on a single computer, data is stored across vast networks of machines, enabling parallel access. Rather than pulling all the data through one narrow straw, cloud technology lets us use as many straws as needed—dramatically increasing throughput.

An equally important feature is data-proximate compute, which brings code to the data rather than vice versa. This minimises delays caused by data transfer and enables rapid processing directly where the data is stored.

Together, these two principles—cloud-optimised formats and data-proximate compute—make it possible to scale local methods to continental and even global domains, such as waterline mapping. In our study, this setup enabled us to map waterlines at 50 kilometers per second. Cloud-native workflows rely on metadata—structured summaries that describe the contents of a dataset—to streamline and optimise processing. Rather than loading entire files into memory, cloud systems use metadata to determine exactly which parts of the data are needed and when. It’s like scanning a table of contents before reading a book—knowing where to look before turning each page.

None of this is possible without standardised, well-structured data. While the broader cloud-native community has made significant progress in developing formats and protocols for scalable analysis, coastal science still needs to define standards that fit its specific needs. This is not just a technical task—it’s a shared responsibility. As a community, we must work together to establish the foundations for scalable, transparent, and reusable coastal research.

Global Coastal Transect System (GCTS): a foundational dataset for coastal analytics

This paper introduces the Global Coastal Transect System (GCTS), a novel foundational dataset comprising over 11 million coastal transects at 100-m resolution. Cross-shore coastal transects are essential to coastal monitoring, offering a consistent reference line to measure coastal change, while providing a robust foundation to map coastal characteristics and derive coastal statistics thereof. The transect system is computed in the UTM projection to avoid zonal bias that was present in earlier systems. The system also comes with administrative fields (continent, country, region), making it ideal for robust statistical regional comparisons.

Built with scalability in mind, the study uses GCTS as the foundation to analyze low-lying coastal regions across the world. The analysis combines GCTS, a vector dataset, with DeltaDTM, that is high-resolution elevation data stored in rasters. Typically integrating both data types at scale is challenging, but cloud-native changes the game. By using cloud-optimised data formats and organizing GCTS so that it is ideal for analytics (geospatial partitions),  the team achieved processing speeds up to 700 times faster than traditional methods. Our case study, about global coastal elevation shows that 33% of the world’s first kilometer of coastline lies below 5 meters—highlighting the vulnerability of coastal zones to sea-level rise and the pressing need for large-scale climate adaptation planning.

Access the Global Coastal Transect System (GCTS) data

While the data is available in a Zenodo repository for download, we highly recommend direct access via the cloud. The data is described in a STAC Collection part of the CoCliCo STAC catalog. For usage instructions, please see this tutorial or the documentation in the public TU Delft GitHub repository CoastPy—which also contains the codes used to conduct this analysis and much more! 

Read the full paper here:

Floris Reinier Calkoen, Arjen Pieter Luijendijk, Kilian Vos, Etiënne Kras, Fedor Baart, Enabling coastal analytics at planetary scale, Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 183, 2025, 106257, ISSN 1364-8152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106257 

Abstract:

Coastal science has entered a new era of data-driven research, facilitated by satellite data and cloud computing. Despite its potential, the coastal community has yet to fully capitalise on these advancements due to a lack of tailored data, tools, and models. This paper demonstrates how cloud technology can advance coastal analytics at scale. We introduce GCTS, a novel foundational dataset comprising over 11 million coastal transects at 100-m resolution. Our experiments highlight the importance of cloud-optimised data formats, geospatial sorting, and metadata-driven data retrieval. By leveraging cloud technology, we achieve up to 700 times faster performance for tasks like coastal waterline mapping. A case study reveals that 33% of the world’s first kilometer of coast is below 5 m, with the entire analysis completed in a few hours. Our findings make a compelling case for the coastal community to start producing data, tools, and models suitable for scalable coastal analytics.

Keywords:

Coastal analytics; Cloud technology; Coastal change; Coastal monitoring; Satellite-derived shorelines; Low elevation coastal zone; Data management

This blog was written by Floris Calkoen (Deltares) and Jacinta Hamley (Vizzuality)

Improving coastal flood models with AI: Spotlight on Iria Suárez Corral.

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As climate change accelerates, better tools are needed to assess and adapt to rising sea levels and coastal flooding. Iria Suárez Corral, a PhD candidate and consultant at IHCantabria, is contributing to this challenge as part of the CoCliCo project.

Her research focuses on improving the way coastal defense structures are represented in flood models, an often overlooked but crucial factor in determining the accuracy of flood impact assessments.

Bridging a data gap in flood risk assessment
Iria is based at the Environmental Hydraulics Institute of the University of Cantabria, within the “Climate Risks, Adaptation and Resilience” research group. Her work combines flood modeling, erosion risk analysis, and the testing of adaptation measures.

At the core of her PhD is the development of a methodological framework to reduce uncertainty in large-scale flood simulations. A key part of this involves using computer vision techniques to automatically detect and characterize coastal defenses from satellite imagery. These structures are typically underrepresented or entirely absent in many regional and continental flood models due to the lack of accessible and standardized geospatial data.

By bringing them into clearer view, Iria’s work can support more reliable simulations and more informed decisions for coastal management and spatial planning.

Why CoCliCo?
For Iria, being part of the CoCliCo project means contributing to innovative tools that promote resilience across European coastlines. The collaborative nature of the project is also a strong motivator.

“It’s also highly motivating to work in a multidisciplinary and international environment, which allows me to connect with leading researchers and fellow PhD students working on similar challenges” she notes.

From chemical engineering to coastal resilience
Iria holds a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Barcelona and another in Protected Areas from the University of Madrid. Her shift toward coastal research was driven by the urgent need for better risk assessment tools in a world facing climate change, sea-level rise, and rapid socio-economic development.

Her aim is to ensure that technical limitations (such as missing data on coastal infrastructure) don’t stand in the way of protecting vulnerable communities and ecosystems.

Impact beyond the lab
With more accurate simulations of coastal flooding, Iria hopes her research will lead to better policy and planning decisions. This is especially important for regions where coastal defenses are critical to reducing the risks of extreme weather events.

By incorporating artificial intelligence and remote sensing into flood modeling, her work aims to support a broader move toward smarter, more responsive climate adaptation strategies.

When not in the lab…
Outside of work, Iria enjoys hiking, scuba diving, and snorkeling. When she’s not exploring the mountains or the sea, she relaxes with watercolor painting and reading.

Want to connect with Iria?
Find her on LinkedIn.

Meet Vanessa Völz: Exploring cost-benefit strategies for coastal adaptation.

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Coastal adaptation is a crucial step in mitigating the impacts of rising sea levels, but how can we determine the most effective and economically sound solutions? Vanessa Völz, a Doctoral Researcher at the Global Climate Forum (GCF), is tackling this challenge head-on as part of the CoCliCo project. Her work focuses on conducting cost-benefit analyses to evaluate optimal adaptation strategies for over 41,000 coastal floodplains in Europe.

From mathematics to coastal adaptation

With a background in mathematics and economics, Vanessa has been working on European and German research projects since 2020. Her academic journey led her to a PhD where she applies quantitative methods to real-world climate challenges. Vanessa’s passion for coastal environments was sparked during her time living along the shores of California and Iceland, inspiring her to combine her analytical expertise with climate adaptation research.

Optimizing adaptation strategies

Vanessa’s research aims to determine where and when different adaptation options, such as protective infrastructure (e.g., dikes), strategic retreat (e.g., relocating away from the coastline), or accommodation measures (e.g., flood-proofing buildings), are economically most preferable. By identifying optimal responses for each coastal floodplain, her work contributes to informed decision-making in climate policy and urban planning.

Collaboration in the CoCliCo project

One of the most exciting aspects of Vanessa’s role in CoCliCo is working alongside researchers from across Europe to develop a comprehensive climate service for coastal regions. The project’s collaborative nature fosters interdisciplinary approaches to tackling sea level rise and coastal risks, ensuring that research translates into actionable insights.

Driving impact

By highlighting the economic advantages of proactive adaptation, Vanessa hopes her research will encourage policymakers and stakeholders to take timely action against coastal flooding. Her findings can provide the necessary justification for implementing protective measures, ultimately contributing to resilient coastal communities.

COCLICO PhD_Pictures (5).png

Beyond research: Vanessa’s passions

Outside of her work, Vanessa enjoys dancing, horseback riding, swimming, and painting with watercolors. Her diverse interests reflect her appreciation for both analytical challenges and creative expression.

Connect with Vanessa

Interested in learning more about Vanessa’s work? Follow her on LinkedIn and explore her research in recent publications, including her latest study: Economic Optimization of Coastal Adaptation Strategies.

CoCliCo Final Validation Workshop

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Three years in the making, CoCliCo is approaching an exciting time… we’re preparing to launch! But before we do, we want some final input from you. 

We are developing a free online platform that will enable users to: 

  • Visualize sea level rise and flood risks for evidence-based planning.
  • Support cost-benefit analyses for coastal adaptation strategies and investments. 
  • Design resilient coastal strategies using state-of-the-art information.

We’ve collaborated closely with policymakers, urban planners, and researchers to drive the development of tailored features, such as flood risk mapping to support the EU Floods Directive, coastal city planning, and infrastructure resilience.

We are now delivering our final validation workshop, a chance for you to test the platform​ and inform us of the final steps before launch. If you work in this field and have been looking for a tool to support coastal risk planning, this is for you! 

The workshop will be hosted by some of our CoCliCo experts: Gonéri Le Cozannet (BRGM), Paul Sayers (Sayers and Partners), Arjen Luijendijk and Etienne Kras (Deltares)

Join us! Register through the form.

Registration form

Help us spread the word by clicking “attending” on LinkedIn and share with your network there!

LinkedIn Event

CoCliCo: It’s Our Final Year! What Can You Expect?

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2024: CoCliCo Milestones and What’s Next

As CoCliCo moves into its final year, we are excited to share the progress we’ve made and what lies ahead as we continue to support coastal regions with data and tools to help them manage coastal risk and adapt to climate change.

What We’ve Achieved So Far

  1. Data Integration:
    • CoCliCo continues to consolidate extensive datasets on coastal hazards (sea level rise, flooding, and erosion), and exposure of assets. These datasets form the backbone of our platform’s risk assessment and visualization capabilities​​. The full set of datasets will be freely available with the launch of the platform. 
    • Key milestones include the integration of Pan-European storm surge projections and infrastructure vulnerability data to assess risks across multiple scales​​.
  2. Platform Development:
    • The Fast-Track version enabled early stakeholder testing and feedback. Now, our Full-Track platform is under development, featuring enhanced exploratory tools, a refined user interface, and support for integrated scenarios​​​. This is currently being further refined in collaboration with our Champion Users.
    • Our “Workbench” will allow technical users to easily navigate the datasets and utilize them with customizable tools to analyze and visualize risks tailored to their specific needs​​.
  3. Stakeholder Engagement:
    • Extensive collaboration with policymakers, urban planners, and researchers has driven the platform’s co-design process, ensuring its functionality meets real-world requirements​​.
    • Workshops, surveys, and validation sessions have ensured usability and accessibility for diverse stakeholders, including coastal engineers, decision-makers, and emergency planners​.
  4. Co-Design and Testing:
    • Rich User Narratives have driven the development of tailored features of the Full-Track platform, focusing on flood risk mapping to support the EU Floods Directive, coastal city planning, and infrastructure resilience.

What’s Next?

  1. Upcoming Features:
    • The Full-Track platform, which includes tools to inspect sea level rise projections and coastal flood risk analysis as well as coastal erosion information, will be finalized by early 2025. 
    • Upcoming features include a scenario-based Web Viewer and integrated data layers that offer actionable insights for policy and planning​​.
      • Implementation of ~5 core user stories.
      • Validation of integrated scenarios.
      • Delivery of exploratory tools for users to visualize and analyze risks
  2. Engagement and Validation:
    • Validation workshops and an interactive event in March 2025 will provide stakeholders with hands-on opportunities to test the platform​ and inform the final steps before launch. You can join online on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 10:00 to 12:00. Registration is open; sign up here. 
    • Dedicated content campaigns will introduce the platform’s features, including its ability to model and mitigate risks from sea level rise, flooding, and infrastructure exposure​.
  3. Final Event & Public Launch in Brussels:
    • The official public launch is scheduled for 23-25 June 2025 in Brussels, where we will showcase the platform’s full capabilities​​.
  4. Beyond Project Lifetime:
    • Post-project, we aim to integrate CoCliCo into Copernicus, ensuring long-term impact and usability. As a first step, we anticipate an integration within the European Digital Twin of the Ocean. 
Sign up for our online validation workshop

How CoCliCo Can Help You

CoCliCo enables users to:

  • Visualize sea level rise and flood risk data for evidence-based planning.
  • Support cost-benefit analyses for coastal adaptation strategies and investments.
  • Help policymakers and planners design resilient coastal strategies using state-of-the-art information​​.

Be the first to hear of the launch! 

The CoCliCo platform is shaping up to be a transformative tool for coastal risk management. As we refine and prepare for launch, we invite you to stay connected, provide feedback, and join our efforts to enhance coastal resilience.Be the first to hear about the launch of the CoCliCo platform by subscribing to our newsletter!

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Modeling Coastal Flood Impacts at Scale: Spotlight on Camila Cotrim.

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How can we better predict the impact of coastal flooding across diverse shorelines? That question drives the research of Camila Cotrim, a pre-doctoral researcher at IHCantabria and PhD candidate in Coastal Engineering at the University of Cantabria.

As part of the CoCliCo project, she is working to develop a large-scale framework for assessing coastal flood impacts from extreme events, across varied geographies while remaining sensitive to local characteristics.

“After completing a master’s thesis focused on large-scale and offshore physical oceanography, I felt motivated to bring my studies to the coast,” Camila shares. “I wanted to better understand how marine dynamics impact different shores and their communities.”

Originally from Brazil, Camila holds a bachelor’s degree in Oceanography from the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro and a master’s in Marine and Coastal Systems from the University of Algarve in Portugal. Her transition from offshore to coastal systems reflects a desire to make science more actionable for real-world decision-making.

A flexible framework for flood risk assessment

Camila’s research is focused on creating a homogeneous methodology for evaluating coastal flood impacts while accounting for the heterogeneity of each study area. By classifying storms according to local features, her framework aims to improve large-scale projections of coastal hazards and impacts. This, in turn, helps identify “hotspots” that require more detailed analysis using high-resolution data on exposure and vulnerability.

The ultimate goal is to equip researchers and policymakers with a tool that can be applied in different regions, especially those with limited resources or data availability.

Learning through collaboration

For Camila, one of the highlights of being part of CoCliCo is the opportunity to work within an international and interdisciplinary research environment. She values the space given to early career researchers to both learn from senior scientists and contribute their own ideas.

“The exchange of ideas and knowledge is constant,” she explains. “You end up learning more than just science but also project management and how people collaborate and show respect in high-level discussions.”

Relevance beyond Europe

Camila sees significant potential for her research beyond the European context. Having grown up in Brazil, where data availability can be limited and coastlines are vast, she believes adaptable tools like the one she’s developing are especially valuable. Her framework is designed to be flexible and transferable, making it useful for other regions preparing for extreme floods or chronic sea level rise.

Outside the lab

Away from her research, Camila enjoys hiking and surfing, and when indoors, she finds joy in baking and reading.

Want to connect with Camila?
Find her on LinkedIn.

Mapping Europe’s future coastal populations: Spotlight on Hedda Bonatz.

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Understanding how coastal populations will evolve under different climate and socioeconomic scenarios is essential for preparing for future risks. Hedda Bonatz, a PhD researcher at the University of Kiel, is at the forefront of this challenge as part of the CoCliCo project. Her work focuses on producing high-resolution population projections to assess exposure to coastal hazards across Europe.

A passion for coastal research.

Hedda’s journey into climate research began when she moved to Kiel in 2016 to study geography. Over time, she developed a strong interest in physical geography, particularly ocean and coastal systems. During her Master’s in Environmental Geography, she worked as a student assistant in the Coastal Risks and Sea Level Rise working group, contributing to demographic studies and population risk assessments. This experience led her to pursue a PhD position within the CoCliCo project, focusing on exposure and vulnerability assessments.

Predicting coastal population dynamics.

Hedda’s research aims to develop spatial population projections for the EU, considering different socioeconomic scenarios. By integrating Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), she and her team explore various possible futures, providing insight into how population dynamics may shape exposure to coastal hazards.

Her approach extends a gravity model of migration, distributing national population projections onto a grid-based system. This method allows for detailed, high-resolution projections, helping researchers and policymakers identify key areas of risk and adaptation needs.

The social side of coastal risk(s).

Initially focused on physical coastal processes, Hedda’s research evolved to encompass the social dimensions of coastal risk. She recognized that human factors—such as migration, urbanization, and economic development—play a crucial role in determining risk exposure. Her Master’s thesis assessed how population exposure in coastal areas varies based on different data sources and urban definitions, further solidifying her interest in population dynamics and scenario planning.

Collaborative research & future challenges.

According to Hedda, one of the most exciting aspects of working on CoCliCo is being part of a large-scale European project that brings together experts from multiple disciplines. Through this collaboration, she contributes to making coastal and climate data more accessible while learning from experienced researchers in the field.

“It’s great to work with so many experts and travel across Europe to exchange ideas on coastal research and project management,” she shares.

Hedda’s research is vital in helping societies better prepare for sudden population shifts and climate-related risks. Events like the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how quickly demographics can change, making it crucial to develop flexible, data-driven models for future planning.

By providing detailed population projections, her work helps identify high-risk areas and supports policymakers in building resilience against climate change.

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Beyond research:

When she’s not deep in coastal data, Hedda enjoys playing football and sailing, spending time with friends, and watching movies. Her passion for the ocean extends beyond her research, making her work all the more meaningful.

Connect with Hedda on LinkedIn and explore her working group’s homepage here.

You can also check out her latest research publication “Comparing built-up area datasets to assess urban exposure to coastal hazards in Europe” on Nature Scientific Data, here.