Valuation of landscape quality. Identifying landscape units and elements in the euro-mediterranean area

Pollution, environmental instability, oversized urban development and new infrastructure buildings jeopardies the integrity of the landscape and people's quality of life. The paper deals with the issue of landscape protection and enhancement by proposing an information-evaluative, methodological and operational framework. The aim is to experiment with an innovative General Information System for Evaluation and Estimation (SIGVS) to support the decision-making process at different scales and to guide planning measures and political actions aimed at protecting and enhancing the landscape. The methodology is supported by GIS tools [1], to identify, detect and spatially define the Landscape Units, as well as the so-called “Landscape Elements”, and their endowment as natural, ecological, historical, cultural and urban resources. The next step is to evaluate the Landscape Elements through multi-criteria assessment tools correlated with GIS. The IAGS was applied and verified on a Case Study located in Calabria in the European Mediterranean basin, to validate the entire information system and the support of the evaluation tools. The results achieved open up the possibility of replicating the application of the methodology at regional, national and European level to support planning activities aimed at protecting and enhancing the landscape.