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A significant and increasing share of the EU population lives in coastal areas. Approximately half the EU population lives 50 km or less from the coast (ESTAT, 2009), with 19% of the EU population (86 million people) living within a 10 km coastal strip (EEA, 2006). It is likely that such numbers will increase in the future. Collectively, this is both placing growing demands on coastal resources as well as increasing people’s exposure to coastal hazards (Sterr et al., 2003).

Coastal areas are dynamic and complex multi-function systems. A wide number of often conflicting human socio-economic activities occur in these areas. These include urbanisation, tourism and recreational activities, industrial production, energy production and delivering, port activities, shipping, and agriculture. Coastal systems are also characterised by important ecological and natural values; their high habitat and biological diversity is fundamental to sustain coastal processes and provide ecosystem services which are essential also for human well-being (MEA, 2005). Human activities often conflict with the need to preserve natural coastal systems and their ecological processes. In the context of climate change, highly urbanised and infrastructured coastal areas are of particular concern since they can drastically limit and even impede natural adaptive processes, such as inland migration or vertical accretion of wetland systems.