## 3 Methodology  
The study methodology consists of the following phases:  
1. A compilation of extreme weather events occurring on the coast during the period from 1 January 2009 to 28 February 2020. A preliminary database is created with the following fields: * Identification of the event: event number, country, region, local name, starting date, final date, and coordinates of the primary focus. Figure 1: The 20 coastal regions of southwest Europe analysed in this paper, including 3807 km of Atlantic coastline and 4227 km of Mediterranean coastline. The most populated cities and the annual number of visitors for each are indicated. Data from [21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26]. * Characterization of the event: processes that took place (flooding, landslide, rockfall, beach retreat, coastal erosion, etc. ), triggering factors, fatalities, injures, damage to, economic losses, emergency plan activated, actors involved, adopted measures and repairing costs. * Source of information: official sources, technical reports, scientific articles, media, links of interest and photos attachment. * Selection of the main extreme weather events using the following three criteria:
* A selection of different types of events was made by considering meteorologically significant events with a regional impact: Atypical Cyclonic Storm (TCA), High Level Isolated Depression (HLID), significant squalls (with their own name) and intense precipitation episodes (>50 mm/24 h) with a regional extension. Extreme sea level events are also included. The main sources of data are the repository of climatological summaries of the meteorological agencies of each country: Meteo France (France); Instituto Portugues do Mar e da Atmosfera (Portugal) and Agencia Estatal de Meteorologia (Spain). With this information, the database was completed by including relevant information for each event: duration and geographical extent, precipitation, temperature and precipitation anomalies, insolation and wind speed data. Some data concerning the maximum recorded wave height have been obtained from other national agencies related to port management. It should be noted that some events were supra-regional and international in scope, like the Gloria storm in January 2020, that hit many regions in the east of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the Southeast coast of France. * A selection of events with at least one fatality or injury due to extreme weather events on the coastline for the same period of analysis. In the case of Spain, official data were consulted from the repository of yearbooks and statistics of the Ministry of the Interior, that provides data on fatalities due to natural hazards recorded by the Directorate General of Civil Protection and Emergencies (DGPCE from its Spanish initials), as well as official reports from similar institutions, Securite Civile and Emergencia e Protecao Civil, for France and Portugal, respectively. An important piece of information we have tried to collect is the cause of deaths and injuries and their relation to the type of process: flooding, being washed away by water currents, onslaught of waves, landslide or rockfall, collapse of structures, etc. * A selection of events with economic damage of more than 60.5 M. For this purpose, official data from the Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros (Insurance Compensation Consortium of Spain) and official information from other institutions in France and Portugal have been used. Additionally, the information in the three sections has been supplemented with other databases, scientific articles and technical reports. In the case of information gaps, contrasted data from the press and other media were consulted, to validate the estimates with the criterion that the same item of data appears as it is more than once. Once the three main data sources (extreme weather events, economic damage and fatalities/injuries) were organised, they were overlaid to select the events with the greatest impact. Figure 2 shows the methodological phases used in the present work.