Emergency river storage in the Ooij polder - A bridge too far? Forms of participation in flood preparedness policy

Disaster policy tends to be in the domain of top-down security governance. However, international organizations are calling for more 'horizontal', participatory forms of planning for flood preparedness together with local stakeholders. But what modality of public involvement do they mean? A case study of decision making on emergency flood storage in the Netherlands, proposed in 2000, illustrates a rift over the degree of public consultation in decisions for emergency flood storage in an extreme event, concluding that the course of action taken was perhaps a 'missed opportunity'. The analysis leads to a typology and discussion of modalities of local participation in disaster governance.