Protecting An Estuary From Floods - A Policy Analysis of the Oosterschelde

The first volume in a series of reports describing the methodology and results of a joint research venture between RAND and the Netherlands Rijkswaterstaat. The POLANO project was founded to help the Dutch government analyze the different alternatives (open, closed, and storm-surge barrier cases) for protecting the Oosterschelde region from North Sea floods. Volume I describes the approach and summarizes the results of the complete analysis. The many impacts of each alternative--including financial costs, flood security, ecological changes, and selected economic and social effects--are presented and compared through the novel use of colored scorecards. The report shows how the impacts vary with changes in the design of the alternatives and in certain assumptions. This work, combined with special studies by the Rijkswaterstaat, was the foundation of the report on which the Parliament based its selection of an alternative in June 1976.