Sustainability of the rapidly increasing coastal population depends on our ability to identify the vulnerability of sea-facing territories: resource sharing is intrinsically linked to the health and sustainability of coastal ecosystems. The GeoSMIT develops a specific research axis on this topic through an integrative approach based on multiscale, multisource and interdisciplinary research for assessing coastal vulnerability, including that incurred by major ecosystems like mangroves and coastal wetlands, to a range of risks induced by natural (ex: sea level rise, storm surge, erosion by wave) and anthropogenic pressures (ex: urbanization, industrialization, pollutions).
Example: Muthusankar G., Proisy C., Balasubramanian D., Bautès N., Bhalla R.S., Mathevet R., Ricout A., Senthil Babu D., & Vasudevan S. (2018). When socio-economic plans exacerbate vulnerability to physical coastal processes on the southeast coast of India. Journal of Coastal Research, 85, 1446 – 1450.