COASTAL VULNERABILITY ANALYSIS OF MAJOR TOURIST BEACHES IN KERALA USING GIS (GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM)

Coastal areas are one of the key systems for global sustainability. These are the transition areas between land and sea. Coastal regions gained importance because of multiple uses, like high productivity of the ecosystem, highly concentrated population, industrial friendly, waste disposal, tourism, transportation, strategic planning in military and many more. These coasts are always in a dynamic state trying to change, and natural ways works for maintaining the equilibrium. India, with most diverse ecosystem, high productivity and thickly populated over coastal region, has gained its very own importance. Despite all of these, Indian coasts are under threat due to multiple stresses like global climate change and human intervention. These stresses are driving vulnerabilities like sea level rise, coastal erosion, frequent extreme events, and saltwater encroachment. In this critical scenario, coastal management has become one of the very important issues in the last two decades. Thus, coastal vulnerability assessment methods have been developed to identify and manage the vulnerable areas over the coast. GIS mapping is an analysis and display system for data with a geographical reference is called a Geographic Information System (GIS). It makes use of information linked to a certain place. Data mapping provides geographical and population information that is essential for many industries, including industry, insurance, health, and education. With GIS, the most recent mapping information may be shared and put to best use.Data on geographical features and their attributes are stored in a GIS. Usually, the characteristics are categorized as raster images or as points, lines, or regions. Aerial photos or scanned maps might be kept as raster images, while city data could be recorded as points, road data as lines, and postal code borders as regions on a map. Coastal vulnerability index of beaches of Kerala are calculated using AHP and this is plotted on maps using QGIS.