Risk and Safety Evaluation Methodologies for Coastal Systems: a Review

Coastal vulnerability is associated with the combined effect of climate change, sea level rise and anthropogenic activities. Likewise, errors in any evaluation for coastal risk and safety are originated from the uncertainty in the formulation of the scenarios about future coastal evolution and societal changes. In order to enhance the applicability of the risk-safety evaluation techniques, it is important to determine the key variables that control the coastal system behaviour, to understand the processes of coastal evolution in response to natural and human forcing, and to identify the mechanisms for the vulnerability and the thresholds of the coastal system. On such a basis, remote sensing and geographic information system techniques can be applied to generate suitable scenarios for vulnerability evaluations.