Kim Van Tittelboom

The European coasts are among the most densely populated of the world, with natural sand dune barriers urbanised and replaced by traditional hard coastal protection structures. Without the needed measures to adapt, the number of people exposed to floods is anticipated to increase 187 million worldwide by the end of the 21st century. In Europe, the coasts of The North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic are anticipated to experience substantial flood risks from sea-level rise, and climate extremes are also expected to impact southern Europe Mediterranean coasts (Vousdoukas et al., 2017). Future coastal management surpasses the current fixed and non-adaptive flood coastal protection setup: Hybrid Nature-based-Solutions (abbreviated as NbS) that can efficiently integrate static hard infrastructure with dynamic aeolian, and vegetated sediments are currently developed along urbanized areas of most of the European sandy coasts, yet still at small scales.