**5. Conclusions**

The human pressure on coastal areas is causing a significant impact on the resilience of the marine ecosystem in which natural and anthropogenic processes interact, modifying their geomorphological, physical, and biological characteristics. The combined effects from multiple pressures are not still considered in management or planning processes and this reduces the overall resilience of marine ecosystems. The assessment of the sea and coastal systems and their interaction, based on scientific knowledge, are the indispensable basis for the management of human activities, in view of promoting the sustainable use of the seas and coasts and conserving marine ecosystems and their sustainable development. A few research is available, where the impacts of human wastewater on coastal ecosystems and community health are assessed.

To overcome these limitations, an Early Warning System for health risk assessment should be optimised through a holistic approach based on the combined analysis of abiotic factors (physical and chemical), hydrometeorological components, and biotic factors also provide health information ecosystem.

The prediction and monitoring of water quality are among the main activities to be carried out for the protection of coastal areas. As for the prediction, water quality is strongly influenced by atmospheric events that could affect the pollution management systems, such as rainfall-dependent sewage drains and tributary river flow. For this reason, river mouths act as critical links between the hinterland and the sea. The prediction of river discharges and overflows using hydrometeorological models can be fundamental for indirect estimation of water quality, given that the drainage network runoff is closely related to the supply of marine nutrients and faecal bacteria. These can be accumulated by the farmed and wild bivalves in the coastal areas posing a risk for the human consumer. Therefore, the development of Early Warning Systems integrating predictive satellite data, could improve both the sanitary surveillance by competent authorities and the daily farming/fishing operations by workers. The economic loss could be reduced by improving the protection of consumer health.

The use of satellite data for water quality monitoring is gaining high importance, see the limitations that remote sensing techniques allow to overcome with respect to *in situ* observations (wide-area coverage, more frequent data availability). Several approaches have been followed for years to perform marine monitoring through satellite observations, depending on the specific parameter to be estimated. For what concerns the detection of quality of water, the parameters estimated are connected to its bio-optical properties. The Sentinel-2 data played a crucial role in the detection of water quality in the coastal areas, indeed, water quality is mainly conditioned by Chl-a and TSM.

A wide number of capabilities should be connected to work together to find ICT solutions: biologists, physicists, engineers, and economists, for an example. Different competencies may be required to achieve this purpose; on one hand, prediction of environmental processes requires deep knowledge of earth system modelling and data interpretation. On the other hand, environmental implications on food security monitoring are requested to adequately assess the design of useful tools or instruments able to really ameliorate the bivalves' productions.

The study cases detailed in this chapter have been conducted by a multidisciplinary team that has developed several tools, also predictive, useful for stakeholders, such as competent authorities, farmers, researchers, veterinary services, and fishermen, consumers. The overall aim was to acquire knowledge and develop innovative technological tools focused on the enhancement of regional services.

### **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*Coastal Water Quality: Hydrometeorological Impact of River Overflow and High-resolution… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104524*
