Following the catastrophic submarine landslide which triggered in 1979 the collapse of a harbour under construction, a devastating tsunami and the breakage of underwater communication cables, the Nice continental shelf has been the focus of scientific interest for the study of gravitational hazard. Since the discovery in 2007 of mechanically weak zones from piezocone soundings in the upper 30 m of sediment, some sectors of the continental shelf are considered to be in the incipient stage of failure  and prone to the triggering of new landslides. In order to gain insight into the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of a catastrophic failure, continuous measurements of the pore fluid pressure are carried out with piezoemeters and monitored in real time since 2015 via an EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory) cabled observatory. In line with this approach, the French-German ANR-DFG MODAL project aims at installing instrumented lances (TIPS) to record deformation and locate failure plans in the upper 50 m of sediments. Two separate missions are required to achieve this goal.  The present application for the MaRoLiS PENFELD mission concerns the use of the PENFELD penetrometer to carry out piezocone sounding from the german vessel R/V MERIAN. This mission corresponds to one of the Legs of the MaRoLiS mission which has already been granted to german collaborators and scheduled for 2020. It will be key in identifying sites where two TIPS can be installed during the subsequent ESTIME2 mission, later in 2020.