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Flexible adaptation pathways are vital for addressing intensifying climate hazards and their wide-ranging impacts across Europe. A 2024 World Bank and European Commission report provides insights how countries can identify the needs and costs of adaptation strategies.

This paper discusses three scientific frontiers that need to be advanced in order to support decision-makers and practitioners in charge of operational decisions and action on the design and implementation of concrete adaptation policies and actions. These frontiers refer to going beyond the (1) incremental vs. transformational and (2) maladaptation vs. adaptation dichotomies and to advancing knowledge on (3) adaptation measures' effectiveness and roles in designing context-specific adaptation pathways. Dealing with adaptation to climate change on the ground often means answering three obvious but critical questions: what to do, where and when? These questions challenge the scientific community's capacity to link conceptual advances (e.g. on transformative adaptation) and ground-rooted needs across sectors and regions (on solutions, governance arrangements, etc.). We argue that the three abovementioned frontiers represent the most burning challenges to the Adaptation Science community to help addressing climate-related societal needs. We also demonstrate that they are intertwined as moving one frontier forward will facilitate moving the others forward.

Governments face the daunting task of developing policies and making investment decisions for climate change adaptation in an environment that consist of complex, interlinked systems with manifold uncertainties. Instead of responding to surprises and making decisions on ad hoc basis, a structured approach to deal with complex systems and uncertainties can provide indispensable support for policy making. This contribution proposes a structured approach for designing climate adaptation policies based on the concepts of Adaptation Pathways, Adaptive Policy Making, and Real Options Analysis. Such an approach results in incorporation of flexibility that allows change over time in response to how the future unfolds, what is learned about the system, and changes in societal preferences. The approach is illustrated by looking at drainage policies and measures to address flooding in Singapore.