Sustainable flood risk management – principles of appraisal: policy statement

2. Principles of appraisal

The flood risk management planning process can be viewed as a hierarchy of appraisal and decision-making, beginning with a high level assessment ( SEPA's National Flood Risk Assessment) and becoming increasingly more detailed (from flood risk management plans to the selection of individual projects). As outlined in section 5 of Delivering Sustainable Flood Risk Management, all appraisals should go through at least the three stages outlined in figure 1. Guidance on each stage is provided below.

Figure 1 Stages in appraisal