Flood risk management (FRM) requires policy-making for the long-term. This means policy-making for a relatively distant and largely unknown future affected by changes in climate, demographics, economics, technology, etc.  It implies dealing with many uncertainties and many possible futures.  It also means that different FRM policy alternatives must be examined and evaluated on their contribution to sustainable development.  

Task 14 provides guidance to practitioners on how to develop and assess strategic alternatives for long-term flood risk management against different future scenarios.

There are three key outcomes from this work:

• The method for developing and assessing strategic alternatives for long-term FRM;
  
  
• Criteria for assessing the sustainability of strategic alternatives; and
  
  
• The results from the application of the method to three case studies (the River Elbe in Germany, the Thames Estuary in the UK and the Schelde Estuary in the Netherlands).

Key words: strategic alternatives, scenarios, flood risk management, sustainability