Multicriteria Analysis for the Prioritization of Climate Change Adaptation Measures of Transport Sector in Urban Environment

Global climate change consists a major overriding environmental problem and one of the most important challenges that environmental regulators are facing with not only economic but also social dimensions. As climate change impacts pose growing challenges to many aspects of life such as infrastructure facilities, agriculture, fishery, ecosystems and human health, many countries and cities are beginning to incorporate climate change adaptation measures/actions into their planning. It is known that climate change effects on regional level mainly depends on the ability of different social and environmental systems to be adapted so it is essential that adaptation will be mainly addressed in a city level. The current study is focusing on prioritizing adaptation measures/actions to climate change in the transportation sector in Attica Region, Greece. The aim of this study was to first investigate and then hierarchy the most appropriate measures/actions that will serve the purpose of climate adaptation in the Attica region. More specifically, in order to evaluate the adaptation measures found in the literature and obtain their desired hierarchy, a multi-criteria analysis was performed. Thus, a total of four scenarios were developed (i.e environmental, economic, social and equal scenarios). A sensitivity analysis was also performed for each scenario, in order to determine the reliability of the results and whether they are susceptible to possible changes in the performance evaluation process. The final results were quite satisfactory and highlighted the hierarchical relationships of those measures, the implementation of which could contribute to the adjustment of climate change adaptation measures of transportation sector in urban environment.