Towards Climate Resilient Coastal Cities: a Framework to Deploy Nature-Based Solutions in the Urban Planning Strategies of the North Coast Cities in Egyptp

Coastal zones of the Mediterranean region are severely affected by the effects of extreme climatic events, along with human-induced pressures, which causes their growing vulnerability. That leads to the urgency for sustainable and resilient long‐term strategies for coastal development projects. In Egypt, the North Coast zone is considered a hotspot for climate-related changes. It is undergoing a series of new urban development projects expanding the urban areas along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. As anthropogenic consequences along its coasts increase, the need for sustainable Nature‐Based Solutions (NBS) will increase accordingly. Recently, adaptive management strategies have been considered an important tactic to atone the unknown environmental conditions that coastal areas struggle with. Adaptive management was exploited to lessen such uncertainty by incorporating adaptive management into climate change adaptation strategies. In response to this need, this paper proposes a framework for nature-based solutions. It consists of four stages, it is founded on a novel approach that combines system analysis and building scenarios. Moreover, the first stage mainly depends on using the structure of the DPSIR (Driving force–Pressure–State–Impact–Response) model to improve ecosystem services and generate the evidence-base for the environmental, social, and economic benefits of nature-based solutions for implementation. The last two steps mainly reflect the adaptive management process and it is well-suited to capitalise on the transformational character of naturebased solutions’ as it encourages “breakthrough” leaps rather than incremental improvements. In essence, this framework aims to employ nature-based solutions in urban planning strategies to increase the climate resilience of coastal cities and. in particular, to identify suitable and less suitable strategies to be deployed in each zone. The framework has yet to be tested in a real-world case study; instead, this paper intentionally focuses on describing its structure, goals, and methodology, discussing its features, and framing its role from a climate resilience standpoint. As a result, the paper lacks a results section. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding its potential adoption and further development