Design of an index for monitoring the environmental quality of tourist beaches from a holistic approach

Uncontrolled tourism development threatens the fragile equilibrium of coastal ecosystems and compromises the environmental services they provide. The beach system especially loses its functionality as a place of leisure and recreation when its natural elements represent a risk for the health of beach users. In Colombia, the lack of a reliable and regular information system that can be used for controlling the environmental and sanitary conditions of their beaches presents a challenge for local environmental authorities. In this consideration, a partnership of local universities was formulated in 2010, known as the Research Program of Environmental Quality in Touristic Beaches of the Colombian Caribbean. Within this research program, the ICAPTU index was designed to assess the Beach Environmental Quality (BEQ) through a mathematical expression that weights a set of parameters used as indicators of ecosystem, sanitary and recreational quality. The update of the model, originally formulated in 2002, included the definition of a new set of environmental parameters, their prioritization, normalization and aggregation into three conceptual indicators. During the model's calibration, the research program has gathered a dataset from six tourist beaches in the cities of Santa Marta, Cartagena and Riohacha, allowing the definition of guidelines for designing monitoring platforms. As a result, a new scheme of the index has been defined that integrates the three dimensions that compose the concept of BEQ (sanitary, ecosystem and recreational). Among the conclusions, the research program has determined that the environmental quality of tourist beaches is a function of the beach performance as an ecosystem and a satisfier of human needs. The updated ICAPTU model is proposed as a technical instrument that summarizes the criteria for analyzing environmental parameters, presenting environmental authorities with a management tool more effective than the comparison of data with the governmental norms, which might be considered outdated or incomplete. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.