Coastal adaptation to climate changes through an Integrated Coastal Zone Management approach: from theory to practice
Presented at the ADAPTtoCLIMATE International Conference, 27-28 March 2014, Nicosia, Cyprus
By: Xenia I. Loizidou and Michael I. Loizides
Abstract
Some of the major issues within an ICZM concept, including climate changing parameters, seek answers to the following questions: how to allocate coastal resources in order to maximize their efficiency, how to assess the impact of decisions, how to evaluate alternatives or decision-scenarios and how to select the best available solutions. It is essential to implement a decision support method. One of the problems, however, is that decision support methods are usually too sophisticated, complicated to non-familiar users, time consuming, and they demand highly accurate datasets. Thus, it is often the case that decisions on coastal issues are taken without the necessary integrated decision support framework.
This paper presents the new developed decision support method DeCyDe-4. It is a highly participatory, site- and problem specific method, with a strong gamification character, to make it attractive to use. A “scoring” approach (scoring through ranges) is incorporated, transforming the parameters that describe the problem into decision criteria.
DeCyDe-4 method provides the decision makers and the professionals with the framework, the overall picture, to understand and justify the main issues that are involved in the process of decision-making and the trade-offs between different decision alternatives. It is a numerical prognosis of the possible impacts that each change can have to the entire “picture” of the targeted aim, with a numerical assessment of each new state/condition, incorporating all kinds of changes.
Easy to use, participatory and robust decision support tools are a step towards the effective adaptation process.
Full paper available upon request.