ABSTRACT. Across Europe, citizens are increasingly expected to participate in the implementation of flood risk management (FRM), by engaging in voluntary-based activities to enhance preparedness, implementing property-level measures, and so forth. Although citizen participation in FRM decision making is widely addressed in academic literature, citizens' involvement in the delivery of FRM measures is comparatively understudied. Drawing from public administration literature, we adopted the notion of "coproduction" as an analytical framework for studying the interaction between citizens and public authorities, from the decision-making process through to the implementation of FRM in practice. We considered to what extent coproduction is evident in selected European Union (EU) member states, drawing from research conducted within the EU project STAR-FLOOD (Strengthening and Redesigning European Flood Risk Practices towards Appropriate and Resilient Flood Risk Governance Arrangements). On the basis of a cross-country comparison between Flanders (Belgium), England (United Kingdom), France, the Netherlands, and Poland, we have highlighted the varied forms of coproduction and reflected on how these have been established within divergent settings. Coproduction is most prominent in discourse and practice in England and is emergent in France and Flanders. By contrast, FRM in the Netherlands and Poland remains almost exclusively reliant on governmental protection measures and thereby consultation-based forms of coproduction. Analysis revealed how these actions are motivated by different underlying rationales, which in turn shape the type of approaches and degree of institutionalization of coproduction. In the Netherlands, coproduction is primarily encouraged to increase societal resilience, whereas public authorities in the other countries also use it to improve cost-efficiency and redistribute responsibilities to its beneficiaries.

This document reflects only the authors' views and not those of the European Union. This work may rely on data from sources external to the STAR-FLOOD project Consortium. Members of the Consortium do not accept liability for loss or damage suffered by any third party as a result of errors or inaccuracies in such data. The information in this document is provided 'as is' and no guarantee or warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The user thereof uses the information at its sole risk and neither the European Union nor any member of the STAR-FLOOD Consortium is liable for any use that may be made of the information.

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ABSTRACT. Society is faced with a range of contemporary threats to everyday life, from natural and technological hazards to accidents and terrorism. These are embodied within integrated emergency management arrangements that are designed to enhance preparedness and response to such incidents, and in turn facilitate a prompt recovery. Such arrangements must be inherently dynamic and evolve as new threats emerge or as existing threats change. An example of the latter is the changing nature of flooding, which is projected to increase in both frequency and severity with climate change. Recognizing this evolving threat, we focus on the evaluation of the effectiveness of domestic Flood Emergency Management Systems (FEMS) as components of integrated emergency management arrangements. Despite the extensive body of literature that documents success conditions of so-called effective emergency management more broadly, there have been only a few attempts to construct a comprehensive evaluation framework to support objective assessment and cross-country comparison. Addressing this gap, we formulate an evaluation framework specifically tailored to the study of FEMS in Europe, which is then provisionally applied to the study of FEMS in England (UK), France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. Important differences are observed in how FEMS have evolved in relation to differing contextual backgrounds (political, cultural, administrative, and socio-economic) and exposures to flood hazard. From this provisional assessment, a number of opportunities for, and constraints to, enhancing the effectiveness of FEMS in Europe are discerned. The evaluation framework thus serves as an important stepping stone for further indepth inquiry, and as a valuable tool for future comparative study.

By applying a posthuman perspective to the analysis of care for older people (COP), we analyse the agential cuts (together/apart) enacted by humans (mainly caregivers and older people) and more-than-humans (a camera intra-acting with other objects) whose agential entanglement configures and reconfigures the political economy of the caring apparatus. Our study identifies 'targeting', 'monitoring', and 'aligning' as interrelated caring practices, thus contributing to advance a posthuman understanding of welfare technology, and advancing a critical use of the possibilities enacted by technologies.