METAscales: Practical knowledge meets research

Germany’s North Sea coast is facing unprecedented challenges: accelerated sea-level rise, clusters of extreme events — such as the simultaneous overlap of storm surges with heavy precipitation — and deep uncertainties about future extremes are calling established coastal protection and disaster management paradigms into question. While current strategies are based on historical design standards and experience, the dynamics of tomorrow are hardly predictable. How, then, can adaptation pathways be developed that remain robust under these conditions?

From the project, three pathways toward a resilient coast emerge:

1) CCT – Participation and Living Labs

The living labs in Wremen and Nordstrand, registered as OKEANO beacon sites — part of an EU-funded international network of living lab locations — create an interface between coastal protection authorities, civil protection actors in coastal and disaster management, and local communities through walking interviews, group discussions, and advisory boards. This transdisciplinary co-design approach anchors impact chains of marine extremes locally and aligns them with administrative frameworks that have often been rigidly oriented toward individual sectors.

Dike inspection in Wremen.

2) CCT – Generic Concept for Early Warning Systems

In the field of early warning, METAscales establishes foundations for Earth observation tools and further develops them to combine numerical modeling with climate and remote sensing data. Aligned with the UN “Early Warnings for All” (EW4All) initiative, we are working within the mareXtreme mission on an end-to-end multi-hazard early warning system structured around four core components: risk knowledge, monitoring and warning services, warning dissemination, and response capacity. In the future, these tools are intended to support rapid response initiatives in disaster situations — through inventories of critical infrastructure and before–after assessments of coastlines.

3) CCT – Marine Extremes and Their Impacts

Impact-based forecasting (IBF) shifts the focus from physical parameters to the specific consequences of extreme events. Rather than merely predicting water levels, IBF identifies how the interaction of storm surges, waves, and heavy rainfall will trigger catastrophic coastal erosion or drainage failure in low-lying hinterland areas. In METAscales, this approach is expanded into “Early Warning for Adaptation,” extending the forecasting horizon to seasonal and decadal timescales. This enables the early implementation of proactive measures such as nature-based solutions, long before sea-level rise or extreme events make them unavoidable.

A special moment in the METAscales project in 2025 was the annual meeting, where Chief Dyke Officer Günter Veldmann from the Wremen living lab contributed his experience. This transdisciplinary exchange on equal footing led to concrete new research collaborations: the monitoring of wrack — organic material such as branches and seagrass whose disposal requires immense effort — as well as the analysis of risks posed by washed-up debris such as containers or tree trunks that can damage dikes through impact.

These topics illustrate how living lab work functions: scientists receive practice-relevant impulses, while local stakeholders gain access to research expertise.