PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The overall aim is to develop, implement and test a new, participatory but scientifically sound and rational approach to planning and management of the coastal zone that can help to reconcile conflicting demands on scarce natural resources.

The primary general objectives include:

• To develop a set of policy guidelines,strategies and early warning tools for integrated coastal zone development with special emphasis on scarce water resources;
• To derive these policy guidelines in a comparative analysis of several Mediterranean countries, and with reference to the relevant European policies and directives;
• To define strategies to effectively reconcile conflicting water use in the coastal zone considering demographic development, migration, economic and technological development.
• To address the balance of resource sue and economic benefits between the immediate coastal zone and its hinterland, and to identify different groups of beneficiaries of policy alternatives;
• To develop and implement a set of tools for the structured and quantitative analysis of water resources management problems and policies, integrating physical and socio-economic aspects within a common consistent framework of indicators of sustainable development;
• To bridge the gap between quantitative engineering studies and the information requirements of an increasingly participatory policy and decision making processes through the use of information technology and the Internet;
• To test this approach and its tools in a number of different locations in different countries to distill generic policy guidelines and best practice for sustainable water and environmental management;
• To develop and implement an efficient public information and dissemination system, primarily based on the Internet, to share the project finding and involve all stake holder groups;
• To foster the cooperation between European and Mediterranean country research groups, and the communication and cooperation between research groups and the policy making process and its numerous actors and stake holders.

Specific scientific and technological objectives
Within this more generic framework, SMART addresses a number of specific scientific objectives:

• To build, and test in a number of parallel comparative case studies, and consistent and well integrated set of tools for the design, analysis, and effective communication of policies for integrated coastal zone management.
• To develop a generic approach to combine engineering analysis with socio-economic considerations in a unifying and consistent multiple-criteria framework.
• To link, through expert systems technology, quantitative simulation models water resources and hydrological models with policy oriented qualitative assessment.
• To integrate expert systems technology with complex simulation models to improve their applicability in data poor and data constrained application situations.
• To develop appropriate tools and methods for the communication of complex technical information to a broad range of participants and stake holders in the policy making process, primarily based on Internet technology.
• To develop formal methods of rule-based aggregation and disaggregation of data and information to span the entire range from data to indicators or criteria, and issues.