Stress-tests measure hazard. They do not measure who gets hurt.

The Delta Plan for Spatial Adaptation requires every Dutch municipality to run a climate “stress-test”: hazard data — heat, drought, flooding — layered onto biophysical exposure. Demographic, socio-economic, and health data that could identify which residents are actually vulnerable to those hazards is widely available, but it is almost never built into the assessment. Adaptation locations end up prioritised by the pipeline of existing infrastructure projects, political timing, and funding opportunity, not by where vulnerability is concentrated. Climate adaptation is consequently often the first line item cut when a project tightens its budget.

Stakeholder engagement is supposed to correct for this, but in practice it rarely goes beyond resident surveys and information evenings, formats in which communities have no standing to plan or advise as equal contributors. The Netherlands’ decentralised adaptation governance compounds the problem: responsibility is distributed across municipalities, water boards, provinces, and regional health services, which protects local autonomy but fragments accountability for who, specifically, ends up protected.

ENGAGED works on the process that produces adaptation decisions, not only on the technical content of the decisions themselves: who is asked, what data they are asked with, and which locations get attention before a single design is drawn.