Advancing Coastal Intelligence with nearshore observations: High-Resolution Topobathymetry and Wave Datasets from SOCIB within the FOCCUS Project

Europe’s coastal zones are among the most dynamic and vulnerable environments on the planet, increasingly exposed to sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, storm surges, and extreme wave events. Yet, despite their importance for ecosystems, coastal communities, and the blue economy, nearshore areas remain one of the least observed components of the marine environment. Understanding and protecting these environments requires high-resolution observations capable of capturing the complex interactions between waves, currents, sediment transport, and shoreline evolution at the land–sea interface.

This challenge is one of the driving forces behind the Horizon Europe FOCCUS project (Forecasting and Observing the Open-to-Coastal Ocean for Copernicus Users), which aims to strengthen Europe’s coastal monitoring and forecasting capabilities by integrating satellite Earth observation, in situ measurements, numerical modelling, and artificial intelligence into a seamless coastal intelligence framework. Through FOCCUS, the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB) has released two high-resolution nearshore datasets focused on coastal topobathymetry and wave monitoring. These datasets address a major observational gap in nearshore coastal data. Their uniqueness in the Mediterranean reflects the substantial financial, technical, and human effort invested by SOCIB in maintaining a continuous, high-resolution record for more than a decade.

These open-access products provide critical ground-truth observations to validate and improve coastal operational models, better assess erosion and flooding risks, run-up estimates, monitor shoreline evolution and sediment transport, and support climate adaptation and coastal management strategies across Europe.

Below is an overview of the two in situ SOCIB datasets developed as part of this endeavor.

Spatial coverage of the high-resolution topobathymetries and the AWAC positions. The background used for the location maps is an orthophoto from PNOA (national plan for aerial orthophotography in Spain) sources (CC-BY 4.0, https://www. scne.es/).

1. High-Resolution Coastal Topobathymetries Dataset (link to access the Data)

Beach morphology and shallow-water bathymetry continuously evolve under the influence of waves, storms, sea-level variability, and sediment transport. Capturing these changes is fundamental for understanding coastal resilience and improving predictions of shoreline response to extreme events. To address this challenge, SOCIB has released a high-resolution coastal topobathymetry dataset covering three monitored beaches in the Balearic Islands: Cala Millor, Son Bou and Muro. The dataset provides periodic beach topography and shallow water bathymetry in situ measurements covering the complete beach system. Spanning from approximately +2 m elevation on the dry beach down to -15 m depth in the water, the data tracks crucial sand level changes over time of the beach and the shallow seabed governed by wave energy dissipation.

Very-high-resolution multipoint shapefiles with a point spacing of approximately 1 m.
Interpolated gridded products in NetCDF format with 10 m spatial resolution.

Generating these topobathymetries requires combining dry beach surveys conducted via RTK-GNSS systems with bathymetric data collected using advanced single- and multi-beam echosounders mounted on vessels. Because the accuracy of such measurements depends heavily on environmental conditions like vessel motion and waves, the data undergoes rigorous expert-supervised quality control procedures. Manual reviews and automatic despiking, density reduction (thinning) to remove acoustic noise, and filtering methods are applied to remove non-physical outliers and acoustic noise. Only data that passes these rigorous checks receives a "good data" quality flag, ensuring an estimated horizontal accuracy of up to ±5 cm.

2. High-Frequency Wave Parameters Dataset (link to access the Data)

Waves are the primary drivers of coastal change, dictating everything from daily sediment movement to severe storm impact. To continuously monitor wave conditions in the nearshore environment, SOCIB has released the Wave parameters dataset based on in-situ observations offering a continuous, hourly time series of high-frequency wave measurements at the same monitored beaches in the Balearic Islands. Data is collected from fixed benthic nodes equipped with in situ wave buoys and Nortek AWAC acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs).

The dataset provides a comprehensive suite of vital parameters, including significant wave height, maximum wave height, mean and peak wave periods, and mean wave direction. As these data are measured in situ, they constitute exceptional ground-truth observations for coastal oceanographic studies and engineering applications. Their validation relies primarily on internal data consistency. To ensure reliability, the datasets undergo comprehensive automated quality control tests aligned with the international QARTOD standards and the Copernicus Marine In Situ TAC guidelines. These procedures automatically isolate non-physical values through rigorous global and regional range checks, spike detection, gradient analysis, and stationarity tests. The resulting valid data retention exceeds 99.90% demonstrating the robustness and operational readiness of the observations, therefore reflecting highly reliable insights for real-time monitoring and early warning systems.

From observations to coastal intelligence

The availability of these carefully validated datasets marks a significant milestone in realizing the ambitious goals of the FOCCUS project towards transforming complex, raw in situ data into accessible, high-resolution, high-quality products. In this context, SOCIB is helping to close the coastal data gap and strengthen Europe’s ability to monitor, understand, and predict coastal change, also helping empower researchers, coastal managers, and policymakers to design safer, smarter, and more resilient coastal strategies.

These datasets are open for public use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. For any further technical inquiries or detailed information on utilizing these products, interested users are encouraged to reach out to the team at mobims@socib.es.

Funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement No. 101133911). Join us in exploring these datasets and contributing to the future of European coastal intelligence.