A Decision Support System for the Management of Coastal Lagoons

Abstract

The correct management of coastal lagoon areas with anthropic exploitation is a difficult task for local authorities. Socio-economic interests and environment preservation are typically contrasting objectives between which a suitable trade-off must be achieved. The solution of this problem requires the development of interdisciplinary and multicriteria approaches. Motivated by future application to the Lagoon of Sacca di Goro (Italy), this paper proposes the architecture of a Decision Support System (DSS) for the management of coastal lagoon areas characterized by shellfish farming and agriculture. The DSS integrates a dynamic model for scenario simulations, the computation of several indicators for sustainability analysis and an optimization model for optimal resource allocation. Special emphasis is devoted to the definition of the optimization problem, which takes into account both the socio-economic and the environmental aspects. A numerical example shows the features of the proposed DSS.

An overview of ecological status, vulnerability and future perspectives of European large shallow, semi-enclosed coastal systems, lagoons and transitional waters

“…The DITTY DSS represents a unitary framework for many DSS already designed and provides an answer to "still open methodological questions about the development and structure of operational decision support systems with and for European decision makers in the field of water resource management" (Mysiak et al, 2002). Several important decision support systems have been developed for specific application,s, such as Bayesian Networks based DSS for the management of natural resources (Bromley et al, 2005), MULINO-DSS for the computer-aided waterresource management (Mysiak et al, 2002(Mysiak et al, , 2005, DSS for coastal areas sustainable development (Carvalho, 2002), WaterStrategy-Man (WSM) DSS (ProGEA, 2013), DSS for Water-Resources Management under uncertainty (Pallottino et al, 2002) fit the general structure proposed in the DITTY DSS (see also Casini et al, 2005;Casini et al, 2007). The DSS was tested in the following lagoons: Ria Formosa (Portugal), Mar Menor (Spain), Etang de Thau (France), Sacca di Goro (Italy), and Gera (Greece).…”

How to Define Priorities in Coastal Vulnerability Assessment

“…A key role in these systems is played by GIS (Geographic Information System), that is, set of computer tools that can capture, integrate and display spatial data. As an example, among these GIS-based DSS are DESYCO DEcision support SYstem for Coastal climate change impact assessment [4] and DITTY approach [21]. As an example, DESYCO is an open source software able to combine different scenario data resulting from climate models and high-resolution hydrodynamic, hydrological and biogeochemical models with vulnerability analysis of environmental and socio-economic features of the territory.…”