Planning Regional Flood and Coastal Erosion Foresight Studies

This Coastal and Hydraulics Engineering Technical Note (CHETN) provides general information on planning regional Foresight studies to assess future flood and coastal erosion risks. Foresight studies are comprehensive scenario based investigations into major policy issues that encourage systematic thinking to illuminate the relationship between policy choices that are being made today and the range of potential outcomes associated with those choices that may be realized in the future. By revealing how the decisions of today may affect outcomes in the future, policy makers have the opportunity to internalize and account for future costs and benefits when making decisions about flood policies. Foresight studies are not an alternative to conventional planning that addresses specific projects over relatively short planning horizons. Rather, Foresight studies tend to address broader policy issues and more strategic policy decisions over longer planning horizons than conventional planning practice permits. This Technical Note discusses planning and implementation of a regional-scale Foresight study to investigate flood and coastal erosion risks, their causes, their trends, and the strategies for managing those risks to achieve long-term policy objectives.