The Dutch Delta Plan on Spatial Adaptation aims make the Netherlands climate proof and water robust by 2050. Regarding climate change effects (e.g. sea level rise), spatial investments (like critical infrastructure) also time horizons beyond 2050 are relevant. Also complex trajectories like increasing awareness of flood risk or breaking through path dependencies in strategies to deal with climate change effects require a long term focus.
Before 2020 all responsible governments have to conduct a climate stress test together with their partners to map the potential consequences of climate change. Based on these assessments of climate risk and vulnerabilities in next decades a diversity of measures need to be desinged and implementen to deal with climate changes effects.
A major challenge in climate adaptation is to link long term ambitions with measures and acting on the short term. In the projects within this living lab students will work on adaptive planning by using techniques like vision development, scenario building, adaptive pathways and backcasting. This can be applied to support the development of integrated implementation programs, creating visions and monitoring tools
Climate adaptation in coastal areas requires the ability to switch between scales. Measures can be applied to make buildings, assets, streets, neighborhoods more climate proof, but also plans need to developed at larger scale, like villages and towns, municipalties, regional, provincial level and the ' Southwest Delta'. Considering climate change also national and international developments are relevant to take into account.