Development of a multi-step indicator-based approach (MIBA) for the assessment of environmental quality of harbours

Environmental pollution in harbours can have detrimental effects on the port, its users, and the surrounding environment. Despite these risks, the Italian legal framework for marine environmental quality does not apply to harbours and marinas, so monitoring is not mandatory. With the aim of supporting environmentally sound management, we propose an indicator-based protocol to assess the environmental quality of harbours through the development of a flexible and site-specific multistep indicator-based approach (MIBA), which gives special consideration to local features. MIBA comprises three steps: (1) development of a simple tool for harbour-specific identification of vulnerable areas and for designing monitoring schemes; (2) selection of suitable environmental quality indicators of different levels of complexity and applicability to the typologies of risks involved; and (3) development of a user-friendly interpretation scheme based on categorical risk values and a visualization code. The approach has been tested in two case studies in marinas located in the Ligurian Sea (Italy).