Proposal for improvement of methodology to determine the potential of economic losses due to coastal erosion

Erosion is a phenomenon that can cause important modifications of the shoreline in various regions in the world. Currently, perceived the damage caused by this phenomenon in the economy, the environment and the society. Thus, methodologies have emerged to determine the rates of coastal erosion and they evolved and today it is possible to determine implications of coastal erosion in other economic activities such as tourism, for example. Another technique was designed for the determination of the potential of economic damages due to coastal erosion. However, this methodology has as a limitation the determination of the behavior of erosion in the long term. Thus, the objective of this paper was to overcome this limitation, in order to improve the methodology that defines the potential of economic losses due to coastal erosion. It was noted in this article that the multi-temporal analysis of products of remote sensing allows to set out this limitation. For the evaluation and discussion, it was chosen the city of Areia Branca (RN, Brazil), where the potential for economic damage to coastal erosion observed was of medium intensity. The methodologies that assess coastal erosion and the potential for economic losses should be continually developed and improved in order to better understand the erosive process and its economic implications.