In the field of environmental assessment methods and tools, the space-based information systems have increasing importance, due to their capacity to organize knowledge according both to the representation of the urban and regional spatial systems (land use, settlement dynamics, urban metabolism) and to the representation of environmental components, normally expressed through a set of indicators (critical factors, vulnerability, etc.). In environmental assessment, the complexity of the cognitive frameworks is a central issue. The problem to represent within a single logic information system sets of data referring to different phenomena onto a spatial dimension, can be usefully implemented through the use of formal ontologies. In the case of evaluation processes in which decisions about land use must be compared with the state of the environment and the potential environmental impacts (also in their spatial dimension), one is faced with the problem of extracting data from the base built for the representation of structured information systems that determine the environmental factors (localized) of the vulnerability of various environmental components. Similarly, the comparison between environmental spatial data and land use and zoning maps should be built on the same type of spatial and semantic logic. Useful tools that can tie together the environmental dimension with the land uses is a GIS methodology are those that are based on formal ontologies. Through this technique of conceptualization, it becomes possible to consider the environmental assessment as a single process.

Cultural landscapes can be interpreted as geographical spaces with high sensitivity. The pressure of urbanization, or alternatively, the abandonment of wide rural areas as a secondary consequence of the same process of urbanization, in these high fragility territories determines serious environmental crises. The high density of values, such as landscape (natural or man-made) quality of landscapes, ecosystem services production, concentrated presence of resources, is constantly threatened not only by climate change but also above all by the same urbanization processes. It can talk about ‘landscape risk’ when these urbanization processes determine changes that cause loss of identity of landscape values. Here, resilience is the ability of an ecosystem (or more precisely, a socio-ecological system) to adapt by virtuous change its internal relations and maintaining the identity values. The paper explores the potential of a method of analysis and evaluation in which, starting from the recognition of the heritage elements, the system of values are compared with the conditions of risk and degradation (due to environmental and man-made drivers) with the result of building maps of vulnerability and resilience.

Liguria Region is totally exposed to the action of the sea storms and too the natural evolution of the profile of the shoreline. The phenomenon of coastal flood produces a direct damage represented by the loss of soil and an indirect damage correlated to the impact on tourism activity, social aspects and damage to heritage buildings. In recent years another type of damage source must be considered, and this is the phenomenon of the increasing of the mean sea water level, known as Sea Level Rise (SLR).