Sustainable coastal zone management of Strymonikos Gulf: implementation of the analytic hierarchy process through an application designed using the programming language C# (sharp)

Abstract

Coastal areas are of interest as they usually include a wide variety of habitats and ecosystems, as well as many important economic activities. Human coastal population increases continually and consequently, there is much stress from all settlements and economic activities to coastal zones. A proposed methodological approach for coastal management plans' environmental strategic evaluation, in the context of sustainable coastal zone management, is described. Therefore, alternative management scenarios for the examined area of the coastal zone of Strymonikos Gulf, are presented. The selection of the prevailing alternative proposal is made through the process of multi-criteria analysis and more specifically, with the aid of the analytic hierarchy process. For the implementation of the suggested multicriteria method, within the context of coastal zone sustainable development, a program in programming language C# (sharp) was designed, in order to help researchers with the selection of the best alternative scenario.