Elsevier

Ocean & Coastal Management

Volume 120, February 2016, Pages 49-63
Ocean & Coastal Management

DESYCO: A decision support system for the regional risk assessment of climate change impacts in coastal zones

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2015.11.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A Decision Support System for coastal climate change risk assessment is presented.

  • It implements Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis and Geographic Information Systems.

  • We present architecture, interfaces and functionalities for end-users.

  • The software is configurable and adaptable to different case studies.

  • Results show how the tool can be applied to aid coastal adaptation decision-making.

Abstract

Several decision support systems were developed in recent years to encourage climate adaptation planning in coastal areas, especially at a national to global scale. However, few prototypes are easy to use and accessible for decision-makers to evaluate and manage risks locally. DESYCO is a GIS based decision support system specifically designed to better understand the risks that climate change poses at the regional/subnational scale (e.g. the effect of sea level rise and coastal erosion on human assets and ecosystems) and set the context of strategic adaptation planning within Integrated Coastal Zone Management. It implements a Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology allowing the spatial assessment of multiple climate change impacts in coastal areas and the ranking of key elements at risk (beaches, wetlands, protected areas, urban and agricultural areas). The core of the system is a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) model used to operationalize the steps of the RRA (hazard, exposure, susceptibility, risk and damage assessment) by integrating a blend of information from climate scenarios (global/regional climate projections and hydrodynamic/hydrological simulations) and from non-climate vulnerability factors (physical, environmental and socio-economic features of the analysed system). User-friendly interfaces simplify the interaction with the system, providing guidance for risk mapping, results communication and understanding.

DESYCO was applied to low-lying coastal plains and islands (the North Adriatic Sea, the Gulf of Gabes and the Republic of Mauritius), river basins and groundwater systems (Upper Plain of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Marche Region). The paper presents the RRA methodology, the structure of DESYCO and its software architecture, showing the capabilities of the tool to support decision making and climate proofing in a wide range of situations (e.g. shoreline planning, land use and water resource management, flood risk reduction).

Introduction

Global climate change is likely to pose increasing threats in nearly all sectors and across all sub-regions worldwide. The impacts envisaged for coastal systems (sea level rise inundation, increased storm surges, saltwater intrusion and sea water quality deterioration) will have severe implications for population and economic activities and are rising the attention of decision-makers and coastal managers at different levels (IPCC, 2014, Voice et al., 2006, EEA, 2010). Particularly, the need to develop national and regional adaptation strategies and cross sectorial risk management plans, to better prepare and adapt to climate related disasters, has become a strategic goal for all the EU Member States (EC, 2007a, EC, 2013). Accordingly, decision makers are increasingly calling for information on what impacts are expected under projected climate change, their location and the groups or systems most affected (Carter et al., 2007, Santoro et al., 2013). This implies a growing importance of innovative integrated and multidisciplinary approaches to support the preservation, planning and sustainable management of coastal zones in view of global climate change (Hinkel et al., 2010; Mokrech et al., 2009).

Many Decision Support Systems (DSSs) were developed so far by the scientific community for the integrated coastal zone decision making environment (Westmacott, 2001) and for tackling unstructured problem solving in the field of environmental management (Agostini et al., 2009, Giupponi, 2007), decision making, and decision implementation (Le Blanc, 1991). Computer based information systems showed a great potential to support climate change impact and adaptation assessment in coastal zones, by integrating simulation models operating at different scales (climate, ecological and economic models) and by applying increasingly sophisticated methodological approaches and interfaces (Ramieri et al., 2011, Iyalomhe et al., 2012).

Most of the tools widely used by the scientific community to aid coastal planning and natural resources management are focused on hydrodynamic and morphological shoreline processes (Delft 3D, Hsu et al., 2006, Hsu et al., 2008; RACE, Halcrow Group Ltd, 2007) or on specific ecological functions and impacts (BTELSS, Reyes et al., 2000, Martin et al., 2002), offering a sectoral perspective on physical or environmental issues. On the other hand, decision support systems already available for climate impacts and coastal zone management (e.g. the DIVA tool) show low adaptability for regional/sub-national assessments (Hinkel and Klein, 2007, Hinkel and Klein, 2009 and 2010), are mostly focused on coastal flooding and erosion impacts (THESEUS, Zanuttigh et al., 2014; RegIS, Holman et al., 2008), and have significant constraints about data requirements and for their customization to new geographical regions (SimClim, Warrick, 2009; Wadbos, van Buuren et al., 2002). Moreover, existing DSSs are usually developed for research purposes and are not directly accessible to the public (CORAL, Westmacott, 2001; Coastal Simulator, Nicholls et al., 2009; DITTY, Agnetis et al., 2006), requiring medium–high levels of expertise (BTLESS, Delft3D, DIVA). Finally, they do not regularly integrate needs and questions from the policy debate by engaging stakeholders and decision-makers through participatory processes (ReGIS; Coastal Simulator; and CVAT, Flax et al., 2002).

Although several tools for coastal zone management and adaptation are available, some drawbacks generally characterize their low applicability in decision-making processes:

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    the effect of climate change is either not included or included at a coarse spatial resolution not sufficient to study impacts locally (i.e. without the support of downscaled numerical model calculations);

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    many tools are often demo for a specific location or prototype research tools not open to the market;

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    the analysis and inter-comparison of risks for different impacts and targets is not allowed.

As a consequence, available tools are often underexploited to effectively integrate climate information and adaptation in coastal zone management.

The DEcision support SYstem for COastal climate change impact assessment (DESYCO), was specifically designed to provide coastal managers with an easy to use software tool that can be applied to produce a spatially explicit scoping of climate risks at the regional scale. The final aim of the tool is to support a preliminary phase of risk assessment (first-pass or screening analysis), providing an integrated view of all the potential threats caused by climate change in the analysed region and fostering decision-makers (and long-term investors) in the identification of a portfolio of adaptation policies and measures. More specifically, DESYCO fills a gap among existing decision support tools, since it allows to:

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    adopt a common and cross-sectoral regional risk assessment methodology (RRA, Landis, 2005, Landis and Thomas, 2009) to identify and rank risk patterns across a range of impacts and targets (coastal erosion and flooding, saltwater intrusion into groundwater, water quality and ecosystems deterioration, damages to human assets and infrastructures);

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    integrate multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous information and scenarios (climate, environmental and socio-economic) into a structured Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) process based on a trade-off between expert judgement and stakeholder perspectives;

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    capture, manipulate and process spatial and geo-referenced data commonly owned by public authorities (digital elevation models, land use and land cover maps, population and critical infrastructures data, maps of protected areas and habitats) using an open source software;

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    adopt a framework that is scalable and replicable, allowing to address evolving decision-makers' needs such as new regulatory frameworks or updated risk assessment methodologies;

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    finally, the tool facilitates the communication, training and dialogue among expert and end-users, mainstreaming climate risk assessment into spatial planning.

After a preliminary overview about the conceptual framework and the operative risk assessment methodology implemented by DESYCO (Section 2), this paper presents the structure and software architecture of the tool, showing its technical features and some examples of functionalities across a range of case studies (Section 3). Finally, the strengths and gaps for the diagnosis of climate change impacts and adaptation options are presented and discussed in Sections 4 Challenges and limitations of the tool, 5 Conclusions.

Section snippets

The regional risk assessment methodology

Usually, environmental risks are assessed and presented in non-spatial ways and focus on the assessment of individual hazards and of their effects on specific elements a risk. However, the heterogeneity of stressors, their geographical distributions and their spatial relations with receptors strongly influence exposure estimations and hence risks (Hope, 2000, Korre et al., 2002, Linkov et al., 2002, Gaines et al., 2005, Makropoulos and Butler, 2006).

Compared to traditional environmental risk

The DSS DESYCO

The DSS DESYCO is the computerized tool implementing the RRA approach described in Section 2. It was developed in 2010 (as a product of the CMCC-FISR Interministerial Italian Project) with a first software release for the integrated assessment and management of different climate change impacts in coastal areas and related ecosystems (beaches, river deltas, estuaries and lagoons, wetlands, forests, protected areas, urban and agricultural areas), and then upgraded with new modules for groundwater

Challenges and limitations of the tool

DESYCO was designed to assist coastal managers (public administrations, environmental agencies, local communities) in preparing, developing and implementing their regional adaptation strategies. It can be used in a preliminary phase of risk assessment, to make a screening of areas and receptors most threatened by climate change, identifying priorities for action.

The MCDA-based method adopted by the tool is largely useful to combine information from different disciplines (physical, environmental

Conclusions

Adaptation to climate change is complex because it implies the assessment of a wide range of impacts on multiple sectors, whose vulnerability and adaptive capacity depend on physical, environmental and socio-economic conditions varying from region to region.

Existing tools and DSS for coastal zones management include various applications, which offer functionalities and features limited to specific impacts or sectors such as wetland changes, coastal flooding and erosion; address problems at a

6. Acknowledgement

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea under the GEMINA project. The authors would like to acknowledge their colleagues Valentina Gallina for the valuable contribution in the development of the RRA methodology and Filippo Corò for the software implementation of DESYCO.

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