Developing a Climate Resilience Tool for Coastal Tourism: Local Adaptation on the Catalan Coast

Climate change presents significant challenges to coastal tourism, making adaptation essential to ensure resilience and sustainability. This study, conducted as part of the IMPETUS project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program, focuses on fostering climate-resilient tourism along the Catalan coast by transforming climate data into actionable information to support informed decision-making. Although tourism is not a priority sector under the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS), its dependency on climate variability and change highlights the urgent need for locally focused adaptation measures. 

Using a participatory co-creation process with local stakeholders, we developed tailored climate indicators to assess the climate potential for tourism activities. Our work included identifying relevant datasets, computing robust indicators, and presenting the results through a user-friendly visualization tool. This tool empowers stakeholders to evaluate local climate risks and opportunities, enabling adaptive decision-making that aligns with regional needs and sector-specific challenges. 

This study underscores the critical importance of addressing climate adaptation at a local scale, where the impacts of climate change are most directly felt and actionable solutions can be implemented effectively. It highlights how co-designed, user-oriented climate services can bridge gaps in global frameworks like the GFCS, offering scalable methodologies for climate-sensitive sectors such as tourism. By providing tools to integrate localized adaptation into planning, our work supports building resilient, sustainable tourism systems capable of navigating the complexities of a changing climate.