Decision making framework for nature‐based solutions to protect critical infrastructure against natural hazards

Abstract Climate change is altering the operating conditions of critical infrastructures (CI) and jeopardizing the objectives for which they were designed. It is therefore necessary to adapt these infrastructures or to strengthen their fitness in order to bring their functionality to an appropriate level. One way to do this is to support them with nature‐based solutions (NbS). In this contribution, a probabilistic based decision‐making tool will be presented that was developed by a group of experts involved in the NATURE‐DEMO Horizon project based on the Dutch RAMSSHE€P approach. It allows to efficiently use NbS to protect CI against natural hazards and climate change effects. The challenges in linking natural hazards and NbS with the classic RAMSSHE€P assessment of infrastructure lie in the complexity of natural hazards, their cascading effects, their dependence on the region‐specific environment and the natural conditions. In the case of NbS, there are also their temporal and ecological dependencies. The developed decision‐making system makes it possible to integrate the effectiveness of NbS and natural hazards into a RAMSSHE€P asset management system that can also be used by regional and supra‐regional experts.