Antonio Aledo

Participatory multi-criteria decision analysis for prioritizing impacts in environmental and social impact assessments

Abstract Environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) can be an extremely useful tool for identifying and evaluating the repercussions of a wide range of initiatives. Typically when the project and its impacts are highly complex, an ESIA can detect a large number of issues that need to be prioritized so that they can be effectively and efficiently addressed. This article presents a mixed-methodology proposal for impact prioritization in ESIA, divided into four phases: (1) creation of the stakeholders’ platform; (2) identification and assessment of impacts; (3) impact categorization; and (4) impact assessment and prioritization using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). This procedure was applied as an ex-post evaluation of a golf-based tourism project in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Huelva, Spain), but can also potentially be used to conduct ex-ante assessments. The main contribution of the study is in the design and testing of a parsimonious procedure, which condenses a large amount of qualitative information into relatively simple operations using MCDA. The process is grounded in the constructivist social impact assessment (SIA) paradigm through stakeholder evaluation of impacts and criteria.

ANÁLISIS ESTRUCTURAL DEL SISTEMA TURÍSTICO RESIDENCIAL EN LA COSTA BLANCA

This paper presents an advanced methodological proposal for the systemic analysis of the residential tourism sector, which allows the identifi cation of its components and the selection of the key issues which comprise such system. It has been selected the Costa Blanca (Spain) as a case study for this research. With the aim of achieving this objective it has been used the software MicMac© (Impact Matrix Cross- Reference Multiplication Applied to a Classifi cation). The work with this tool by means of a Panel of Experts has led to the identifi cation of eight key issues of the residential tourism system in the Costa Blanca: Territorial Planning; Land consumption; Prices; Prestige of the destination; Type of construction; Retirement migration; Landscape, natural resources and beaches; and Urban scenery. This methodology improves the information to be used in the strategic decision making processes for planning at a regional scale.