Over the last decades the reported flood damages have increased tremendously in most regions of theworld. Although changes in flood frequency and magnitude cannot be excluded the main cause is seenin the land use changes in flood prone regions transforming agricultural land into industrial andresidential areas. To be able to account for these changes an anticipatory flood risk assessment andmanagement is required to identify at an early stage emerging hot spots of flood damage.This lecture presents a methodology considering potential land use development plans and possibleimpacts of climate change on flood damages. In a first step those areas are identified which exhibitalready today a higher flood risk. Second, population changes and the respective regional development plans are analysed and areas with increasing population are delineated. These two layers of informationare combined to rank regions with respect to emerging flood risk. Due to the large uncertainties indetecting climate induced changes in flood frequency a sensitivity analysis is applied by augmenting theflood peaks by 10%. The respective changes in inundated area are dependent on the topography whilethe increase of damages is obtained by intersection of future flood maps and land use. The proposedmethod was applied to whole Austria. Here, the application to a province is described where a rankingamong districts was established identifying high present risk municipalities together with the future increase in exposure. This information can be used for adjustment of land development plans and/or for planning of flood protection measures.