The support of multidimensional approaches in integrate monitoring for SEA: A case of study

Abstract

During the centuries, the seaside has represented a crucial pole for future human development and civilization. The use of the sea for transport and trade and the overwhelming availability of food derived from coastal waters have encouraged and strengthened the growth of urban settlements. In the same time, the human pressure menaces to destroy coastal habitats and consequently their carrying capacity that allows for many essential functions. Low-impact activities are often replaced, on the surface, by new intensive ones that are attractive in the short term, but that in the long term undermine by reducing the resilience of the coast. It is clear that, in a perspective of sustainable development, economically efficient and socially equitable use of coastal areas need to be supported inside strategies to correct these weaknesses. The definition of such strategies and their implementation in the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is an essential tool for supporting decisions and of monitoring. The issues of monitoring, more in particular, have been the subject of study and modelling by the use of Dynamic Spatial Data Analysis (DSDA), in the case of the SEA of the Coastal Plan of the Italian Apulia Region, as an information instrument for regulating the anthropogenic changes; a possibility to implement the analysis of environmental sensitivity and propensity to Coastal erosion has been explored, in order to control the level of human pressure on land. The monitoring system should provide an automatic "alert" when the dimension and the velocity of the change of land use overpass some threshold of environmental pressure. © 2012 Author(s).