On February 27th, Mar Riera Spiegelhalder, consultant and researcher at ENT and Fundació ENT, defended her doctoral thesis, entitled “Socio-economic assessment of ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation in coastal urban areas,” at the University of Valencia. This research was conducted within the framework of the European Horizon 2020 project SCORE – Smart Control of the Climate Resilience in European Coastal Cities and was supervised by fellow ENT member, Luís Campos Rodrigues.
The doctoral thesis contributes to the advancement of knowledge on Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EbA). Firstly, it presents a systematic literature review to identify the key methods used in analyzing the socio-economic impacts of EbA, compared to other adaptation measures in coastal urban areas. Based on these results, a participatory process based on Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) is defined and applied to identify appropriate options for addressing coastal flooding. The research also develops and validates a decision-support tool for the local implementation of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), highlighting adaptive governance, policy alignment, and financing mechanisms as key enabling factors.
The main research findings have been published in three scientific articles:
- Riera-Spiegelhalder, M., Camps-Rodrigues, L., Ensenat, E. M., Dekker-Arlain, JD, Papadopoulou, O., Arampatzis, S., & Vervoort, K. (2023). Socio-economic assessment ecosystem-based and other adaptation strategies in coastal areas: A systematic review. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 11(2), 319.
- Riera-Spiegelhalder, M., Rodrigues, LC, & Martínez, AF (2025). A Multicriteria Analysis to Integrate Stakeholder Perceptions d’Ecosystem-Based Flood Adaptations in Coastal Urban Areas. Documents d’anàlisi geogràfica, 71(1), 153-179.
- Riera-Spiegelhalder, M., Martínez, AF, & Rodrigues, LC (2025). Assessment framework per assistir ecosystem-based adaptation implementació al local level: evidence from Spain and Portugal. Global Sustainability, 8, e33.