This paper compares the inherent notions of justice in four different approaches to flood risk management in Europe. As protection against flood risks becomes increasingly difficult, dilemmas of justice emerge: some benefits from flood protection measures whereas others loose. Decisions on whom to protect differentiate between upstream and downstream or left and right side of a river. This raises a central but barely discussed conflict: what (or rather who) should be protected against inundations? This question deals in essence with justice. Justice concerns questions over fairness in the allocation of resources, capital and wealth across different members of society. There are different and contradicting concepts of justice, which differ in interpretations of fair resource allocation and distributions. 'What's the right thing to protect' is thus a question of concepts of justice. This contribution is not an attempt to answer this fundamental question, but it offers a debate on how different concepts of justice provide different answers. These answers will then be related to flood risk management approaches in England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria.

In response to increased pressure on coastal systems, integrated coastal management and planning has emerged as a comprehensive approach to involve multiple users within decision-making. The deliberative spaces in which public participation occurs consist of complex social processes where the "wickedness" of integrated coastal management problems can be observed. Using Cultural Theory, conflicting rationalities within an in-class roundtable exercise were identified to expose the "wicked" nature of coastal problems. In response to these conflicts, students within the roundtable exercise incorporated multiple perspectives into decision-making to reach "clumsy" but integrated solutions. Observations of the roundtable exercise indicate that "wicked" problems and "clumsy" solutions offer an appropriate framework for navigating the deliberative spaces of integrated coastal planning.

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The flood risk management plan challenges both water engineers and spatial planners. It calls for a new mode of governance for flood risk management. This contribution analyses how this mode of governance distinguishes from prevalent approaches. Spatial planning and water management in Europe are explored in terms of their actor relation, their institutional context, and their approach to the object. These three characteristics of the modes of governance are compared with the governance requirements that flood risk management demands. It is concluded that the governance of flood risk management in Europe should strike a balance between comprehensive and hierarchical planning on the one hand, and interactive planning on the other hand, leading to a spatial water governance. Modes of governance and the flood risk management planThe flood risk management plan required under the European Union (EU) Floods Directive comes along with two major challenges: first, its demand to regard whole river basin districts; second, its suggestion to incorporate extreme scenarios into deliberations on flood risk management, which opens a discourse on protection levels and risk absorption (Directive 2007/60/EC). While the first challenge is the usual working paradigm of water engineers, who traditionally try to keep the water out of the flood plains (Wiering and Immink, 2006), the second forces spatial planners to reconsider their approach to flood risks -water engineers are no longer providing 'lines of defence' against the water. Thus, water engineers are virtually encroaching upon the arena of spatial planning; spatial planners need to be able to read and interpret water engineering data. This raises the question of how the flood risk management plan affects contemporary thinking and action in both fields. In other words, which mode of governance is required for the flood risk management plan?Water is managed by water managers, and spatial planning determines the use of land. This distinction and the clear separation of responsibilities are quite strong in most European countries (Moss, 2004;Spit and Zoete, 2009). In Germany, for example, this institutional divide between spatial planning and water management is very entrenched (Moss, 2009); also, in the Netherlands, where the ministry responsible for spatial planning has recently been merged with the water ministry (Spit and Zoete, 2009), land and water are governed differently.The flood risk management plan challenges the distinction between land governance and water governance, and asks for a common governance of both (Reese, 2011). The new plan, namely, interweaves water policies and spatial planning in a way that nurtures 'spatial water governance' . This describes a process of interaction between spatial planning and water management entities that ultimately aims to integrate the spatial dimension of land use issues and water issues to achieve a more sustainable and viable management of land and water. We identify features of the new mode of governance by juxtaposing...

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Floods cause enormous damage on land and thus question the boundary between land and water in an extreme way. As floods increase in frequency and intensity, flood risk management must change from a resistance-based approach to a resilience approach. Whereas land uses require robust boundaries between land and water, the changing water system demands more flexible boundaries. This contribution discusses this tension from a theoretical perspective of resilience and co-evolution, using a socio-ecological systems approach. This offers a new perspective on the co-evolving frontier between land and water

Many urban residences are insufficiently prepared for fluvial, pluvial or coastal floods, owing to a lack of accurate information on flood risk. This article analyzes how risk communication can improve disaster risk reduction by overcoming the expert-layperson gap. Building on interviews in three cities in the Netherlands, it applies Q methodology to identify four perspectives on flood risk communication. To promote greater private residential involvement in flood risk adaptation, communication should address all four rationalities.

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