Planning and Management of Coastal Areas. Case Study: Reggio Calabria, Southern Italy

In the recent decades, anthropization process has significantly modified the natural landscape, with the expansion of existing inhabited centers and the construction of new ones. This process occurred above all in coastal areas, and it altered the natural sedimentary regime, together with other natural and anthropogenic forcing such as sea storms and hydraulic works in river areas. Consequently, this process often causing significant shoreline erosion which led to the construction of coastal protection structures. However, in numerous cases these structures do not solve the erosion process or transfer it towards the neighboring coasts due to critical issues during the design phases such as not analyzing all the forcings or not considering the entire physiographic unit. Therefore, in the planning and management phases of coastal areas and in the design of coastal protection structures it is of the utmost relevance to consider all the natural and anthropogenic critical issues and analyze the entire physiographic unit. From this point of view, morphodynamic modeling plays a key role. The paper describes the planning and management phases of a highly an-thropized coastal area such as Reggio Calabria, a city in southern Italy to identify suitable coastal protection structures through morphodynamic modeling with the Mike Software powered by DHI.