Spotting Deficit Areas: Mapping Ecosystem Service Demand and Supply to Define Local Preparedness to Floods

Adaptation planning can increase climate resilience by reducing the level of hazard exposure of people and assets and increasing the adaptive capacity of the city to respond to shocks. Among the measures that planning practice can take to build resilience to climate change, the promotion and management of ecosystem services (ESs) have been recognised as a promising, effective, win–win, multipurpose, and cost-effective solution. The integration of ESs into spatial plans is considered an indicator of a city or region’s ability to implement adaptation actions toward sustainability and resilience. Unfortunately, the level of integration of ES-related concepts into spatial planning is still below expectations. A major limitation preventing the widespread integration of ESs into planning practices for climate adaptation relates to the gap between science and practice, that is, between the production of scientific knowledge about ESs and its actual use to inform and support decision-making. In particular, ESs demand mapping is critical to support decision-makers in understanding where and which ESs are (most) needed in relation to the needs of target beneficiaries, as it can be used to identify where and which ESs are most needed. The objective of this paper is to provide a step-by-step methodology to identify areas where there is a deficit of ESs in response to flooding. The work develops a GIS method to identify and map ES demand areas (or areas requiring services) that do not benefit from ESs supply to support ecosystem-based climate adaptation policies. Several types of results are provided: (i) an approach that can be replicated in other regional contexts, (ii) insights from the application to a case study, and (iii) considerations on the usefulness of specific concepts to serve research and practice in the field of ES-based adaptation planning. The novelty of this study is that it provides a categorisation of deficit areas based on the physical characteristics of the land, which provides a key entry point for planners to begin incorporating ES-based adaptation into practice.