CANTICO – Climate and local ANthropogenic drivers and impacts for the TunisIan COastal area (CANTICO)
The main objective of CANTICO is to develop a pilot study to establish a conceptual model tool to integrate the complex interaction of climate and anthropogenic impacts on vulnerable Mediterranean coastal areas. The effort will be aimed at identifying an effective approach to assess and prioritize risks and impacts thus supporting decision makers to define sustainable Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) procedures. The Gulf of Gabes area (Tunisia) was chosen as case study. It is a representative example of coastal zone subject to a multitude of significant and rapidly evolving pressures from natural and anthropogenic drivers that are recurrent in the Mediterranean coastline.
The specific objectives of this project include:
- the development of a conceptual framework to simulate local effects of atmospheric forcing in climate change scenarios;
- set up a downscaling set of numerical tools for the Gulf of Gabes in order to simulate the coastal dynamics, capable to be nested with larger scale, already existing models;
- include local anthropogenic forcings in the climate change scenario simulations for the coastal area;
- provide a sound and feasible methodology for the assessment and prioritization of risks and impacts posed by the combination of climate and anthropogenic impacts on coastal areas;
- provide preliminary indications for the implementation of appropriate adaptation and ICZM options.
CANTICO will be based upon a multidisciplinary approach, gaining new knowledge by integrating existing tools. Results will take into account the needs of stakeholders and decision makers.
The research unit is involved in WP2 (Definition of the methodological approach) and WP5 (Implications for ICZM and Adaptation) with the following activities:
- adapt the general DPSIR to the study case of the Tunisian coast for both global climate change and local anthropogenic drivers;
- a review of risk-based methodologies and approaches applied to obtain impact and risk indicators/indexes, and a review on the role of available socio-economic and biophysical vulnerability, impact and risk indicators/indices;
- development of a Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology that enables to evaluate all the components contributing to the computation of risk in different sub-areas of the same region, to prioritize the importance of these zones and finally combine the information for estimating the relative risk in the individual sub-areas of the region and rank the individual risk factors;
- development of a RRA framework integrating future climate scenarios with socio-economic and biophysical vulnerability assessments;
- construction of vulnerability maps for identifying sensitive areas and targets so that protection priorities can be established and adaptation strategies designed in advance.