A New Coastal Erosion Risk Assessment Indicator: Application to the Calabria Tyrrhenian Littoral (Southern italy)

Littoral plains are exposed to natural phenomena such as sea-waves, tides, rainfalls and sea-level rise but also to human pressure, determining a growing exposure of the natural and man-made environments to hazard conditions. Through this work, a new kind of multiple approach is proposed to evaluate the coastal risk due to erosion processes, which was first tested on the Calabria Tyrrhenian coast. The resulting data show that 35% of the coastal stretches are classified into very high risk category, 30% into high risk, 28% into medium risk and only 7% into low risk. The coastal areas, characterized by high and very high levels of risk, are formed by sandy beaches and distributed mainly at the northern side of the regional coastline while the southern part, distinguished mainly by rocky outlines, shows lower risk levels. The comparison between the calculated risk values and the real conditions of the damage state shows a good correspondence, testifying the pertinence of the new methodology. The latter is based on indices with data easily available, making the procedure fast and simple to use and applicable mainly for large scale surveys. The achieved good results suggest that the new methodology used to evaluate the coastal risk condition may be also extended to other Mediterranean beaches.