RESEARCH FOR

ESTIMATION OF POTENTIAL IMPACT OF
COASTAL EROSION PROTECTION IN LATVIA
Impact on regional
development
Social-economic
conditions
Martineza et al., 2007; Brenner et al., 2010), method
of estimating market value and cadastral value of land
were applied.
Costs – benefit analysis (CBA) is a quantitative
method for evaluation of public projects. It is applied
to determine:
� the best possible alternative;
� impact of the project on the region where it
takes place
� risks of the Project and its financial and
economic impact (Roebeling et al., 2011).
The identification of costs and benefits is a
significant step for evaluation of the impact of the
Project and usefulness of the costs. The positive
impact or benefits can occur at once, after a while or
in a long term perspective. This method is more often
used for evaluation infrastructure or capital investment
projects. In Figure 1, an application of CBA for return
of investments of regional development projects that
we consider to be also sustainable coastal protection
is shown. The authors of the article follow CBA
application scheme as follows:
Overall, the benefits of cost-benefit analysis can be
classified as follows:
� tangible benefits - expressed in terms of money.
For example, new working places, reduced for
certain social groups;
� intangible benefits – difficult to express in
terms of money, but they are often quantities in
units of time, health, comfort,
CBA and „financing
gap” method
Micro-economic criteria
Projects
Community strategic
guidelines
Financial allocations to
Member States and
regions
Macro-economic criteria
environmental or cultural factors. For example,
successful implementation of public relation
in long term provides positive effect on target
groups and society in general;
� administrative benefits arise in a way of
providing and improving state administrative
functions, for example, merging two separate
institutions, reducing costs, etc. (Turnera et al.,
2007).
results and discussion
The economic evaluation techniques particularly
cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis for coastal
protection in this case were used to ascertain the most
effective alternative.
To determine costs and benefits of coastal erosion,
the net present value for certain district where coastal
protection is plannedwas estimated. It was estimated
as follows:
244 ReseaRch foR RuRal Development 2012
∑
Liga Brunina, Elina Konstantinova
Determination of
programs and priorities
Figure 1. Application of CBA for return of investments of regional development projects.
∑
(1)
where Z – costs of coastal protection and value of land
lost in process of coastal erosion. LVL
t – time period
r – discount rate
L – value of total land protected, LVL