Plan for liveability and the unexpected: A socio-economic approach to account for stakeholder priorities and future uncertainty

Uncertainties caused by long planning horizons and stakeholders with different priorities increase the planning complexity of nature-based solutions in urban areas. We developed a socio-economic approach that assess NBS ability to achieve stakeholders’ planning objective(s), and the robustness of the NBS performance by including future uncertainty and different stakeholder priorities. The framework was tested and exemplified through a Danish case study. We introduced the term “Decision lens” that illustrates different ways of considering NBS performance depending on the decisions different stakeholder can make. Overall, the inclusion of planning objectives, future scenarios of climate change and urban development, and decision lenses clearly impacted the performance of NBS. Thus, suggesting the need for considering multiple stakeholder perspectives and scenario analysis.