The Service Benefitting Area is a spatial unit in which the beneficiaries of an ecosystem service flow are located. SBAs therefore delineate groups of people who knowingly or unknowingly benefit from a specific ecosystem service of interest (Syrbe et al. 2017) ¹⁾ .For the explanation on spatial relations of Service Benefitting Areas (SBA), Service Connecting Areas (SCA) and Service Providing Areas (SCA) see the respective articles.

Within AlpES, the SBAs cannot directly be assessed as the actual fulfillment of demand is mostly unknown. Only for services bound to clear vectors, e.g. the “Protection of areas against avalanches, mudslides and rockfalls” the SBAs are known through the indicator method, otherwise they are often well identifiable through local knowledge for most ecosystem services.