The Relation Between Coastal Flood Risk and Ecosystem Services Affecting Coastal Tourism: A Review of Recent Assessments

It is widely accepted by the scientific community that coastal cities are considered the most vulnerable urban areas. Future climate change scenarios and impacts are expected to exacerbate coastal flood risk with ecological and economic influence on the ecosystem services and human activities as coastal tourism. In this context, the aim of this chapter, reviewing recent research, is to explore the state of the art on the vulnerability of coastal zones, mainly due to the risk of “great floods”, and the potential adaptation of coastal tourism to address this issue in the face of climate change. The perspective of this review analysis is to deepen the interrelations among climate change and flood risk related to coastal ecosystem services and their impacts on coastal tourism. Particularly, by conducting a systematic review focused on Australian and European regions, the present study examines the emergent themes about these topics while addressing the need to deal with an integrated approach. We searched two academic literary databases and identified 16 studies that met the selection criteria for this review. Findings highlighted that relatively few studies had analysed the interrelationships between these issues, showing a research gap both from a regional geographic coverage and from a strategy perspective. Emergent themes of the recent studies reviewed here could help to discover critical features and future research axes for more resilient coastal urban communities.