Climate-Resilient Land-Use Planning Across Heterogeneous Southern European Hazard Regions
Climate-resilient land-use planning increasingly requires methods that can translate heterogeneous climate-risk knowledge into actionable territorial recommendations. This study develops the Hazard–Sector Translation Framework, a planning-oriented method for linking regional hazard pathways with affected territorial systems, land-use domains, recommendation families, planning instruments, and resilience functions. The framework was developed through a qualitative cross-regional synthesis of five Southern European regions: Sicily, Costa del Sol, Osijek-Baranja County, Central Greece, and the Troodos Mountain Range. The analysis identifies how diverse hazard pathways, including heat, drought, water scarcity, pluvial flooding, wildfire, hail, frost risk, and tourism climate-suitability pressures, become actionable through recurring land-use domains. Results show that heterogeneous regional risks converge around five main land-use resilience domains: buildings, agriculture, blue-green infrastructure, transportation, and protected-area conservation, while governance and capacity are treated separately as cross-cutting implementation conditions. The operational matrix demonstrates how region-specific hazard pathways can be converted into traceable recommendation structures without reducing local complexity. The framework does not replace detailed hazard modeling or climate-risk assessment; rather, it provides an intermediate methodological bridge between climate-risk evidence and land-use planning action. The approach is transferable to other regions seeking to organize stakeholder-derived needs and adaptation recommendations into coherent, sector-specific planning responses.
Authors
- Gigliola D’Angelo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3243-9080)
- Giulio Zuccaro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8572-067X)
- Mattia Federico Leone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2434-509X)
- Georgios Xekalakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0448-1935)
- Denis Havlik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9224-7542)
- Marija Vurnek
Institutions
- AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (AT)
- University of Zagreb (HR)
- San Raffaele University of Rome (IT)
- Frederick University (CY)
- University of Naples Federico II (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Land
- Published
- 2026-07-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081352
- Primary Topic
- Disaster Management and Resilience
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- European Commission