Recent studies indicate that sea level rise in the Netherlands may be more severe than initially anticipated. As the body of knowledge on accelerated sea level rise has increased, so have the development and exploration of long-term orientations for addressing accelerated sea level rise, especially in research-by-design-based studies. This chapter elaborates on the potential water system and land use impacts of the formulated orientations for flood risk protection (also including accommodation, coastal advancement, and strategic retreat). In addition, two local scale design studies are illustrated that demonstrate how these conceptual orientations can be applied while simultaneously improving spatial quality.@en

The role of the designer in flood risk management strategy development is currently often restricted to the important but limited task of optimally embedding technical interventions, which are themselves derivatives of system level flood risk strategies that are developed at an earlier stage, in their local surroundings. During this thesis research, an integrated approach is developed in which spatial quality can already be included in the regional flood risk management strategy development, and thus can become a decisive ‘ex-ante’ aspect of flood risk management strategy development. The key principle to this approach is the inclusion of a range of interchangeable (effective) flood risk reduction interventions at varying locations, so that the criterion of spatial quality can become decisive in flood risk management strategy development. As part of the methodology development, an assessment framework is developed, allowing for the assessment of the impact of the different interventions on spatial quality; research-by-design is employed to systematically evaluate different interventions at different locations. The Rijnmond-Drechtsteden area in The Netherlands is used as a case study area for this research.@en