A decision support system for Brevard County's barrier island system

Coastal development in barrier islands is an important and current issue in Integrated Coastal Zone Management. The high value of waterfront property creates a high demand for development and places great pressure on the environment, curtailing the sustainable development of the coastal zone. As people continue to move towards the coastline, landuse allocation tends to favor urban and tourism developments, which increase the negative impacts and the costs of shore protection from natural hazards (e.g. coastal erosion and flooding).; The goal of this research was to design a Decision Support System capable of quantifying through simulation the effects of the implementation of different coastal development policies over a 10-year period on the future land use patterns of a region and on the area's capacity to sustain current population growth rates. Two areas on the Florida's Brevard County barrier island were chosen to assess the viability of the designed framework: the City of Satellite Beach and the South Beaches unincorporated area.; Land use patterns were used as a measure to quantify coastal development. Different coastal development policies were simulated and the changes in the land use patterns analyzed. The effects of chosen policies on the socio-economic reality of the areas were predicted and the potential damages and costs of tropical and extra-tropical storm surges estimated. The two case studies chosen illustrated well the capabilities of the model when simulating the effects of the different development policies on the future land use patterns of the area.