Abstract. As Europe is faced with increasing droughts and extreme precipitation, countries are taking measures to adapt to these changes. It is challenging, however, to navigate through the wide range of possible measures, taking into account the efficacy, economic impact and social justice aspects of these measures, as well as the governance requirements for implementing them. This article describes and evaluates an approach to selecting and analysing climate change adaptation measures that was applied at six research sites across Europe. It describes the steps that were taken in collecting, selecting and analysing adaptation measures, in a process with local stakeholders, with concrete examples from the case studies. The governance analysis focuses on the requirements associated with the measures and the extent to which these requirements are met at the research sites. The socio-economic impact focuses on the efficacy of the measures in reducing the risks and the broad range of tools available to compare the measures on their societal impact. Finally, the social justice analysis focuses on the distributive impacts of the adaptation measures. In the discussion, we identify some key findings with regard to the different kind of measures. In the conclusion we briefly assess the main pros and cons of the different analyses that were conducted. The main conclusion is that although the research sites were very different in both the challenges and the institutional context, the approach presented here yielded decision relevant outcomes.