Multi-Criteria Analysis of Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Strategies for Flood Risk Reduction in Irish, Italian, and Turkish Coastal City Living Labs

As 1.8 billion people face the risk of flooding globally, its critical to improve decision-making processes that inform coastal planning. This involves selecting optimum adaptation strategies, requiring efficient community engagement to contextualise decision-problems, as top-down approaches alone have been insufficient thus far. Strategies like ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) are becoming popular due to their cost-effectiveness, easy maintenance, and long-term protection; yet their uptake remains limited. Decision-support tools like multi-criteria analysis can address by enabling stakeholder collaboration. This research aims to asses the utility of EBA strategies for flood risk reduction and offering co-benefits in diverse coastal European regions using multi-criteria analysis.