Assessments and decision-making processes for sustainable touristic ports in Mediterranean

Abstract

The Mediterranean is a particularly significant context to be analyzed in order to understand the changes taking place both in terms of territorial transformations that for the processes of analysis, evaluation and management of the interaction relationships among cities, territories, port areas and natural systems. At the same time, sustainable development should be a priority objective of the Mediterranean, as the different anthropogenic pressures represent a relevant weight to the existing, limited and vulnerable resources.

Therefore, it is essential to identify appropriate decision-support systems that enable the identification of strategies and actions sensible to local circumstances, select appropriate indicators, useful for analyzing the impacts in ex ante, on-going and ex-post phase, and identify useful predictive models in order to evaluate the different types of impact (direct, indirect, cumulative, synergic, etc.), taking into account the cognitive framework updated and available for each context.

Starting from the documents and international experience focused on sustainability of the processes activated in the Mediterranean countries, the paper analyzes the characteristics of the system of port facilities developed to meet the needs of new forms of tourism from the point of view of the evaluation. Through an analysis of the assessment approaches and structured systems of indicators at the international level, a selection has been made with a proposal for some indicators considered most relevant and able to allow for a multidimensional assessment of impacts in the areas of touristic ports development.