The Netherlands is exposed to fluvial and pluvial flooding aggravated by the subsidence of the land, which pose significant threats to the population. Flood risks due to climate change are a growing concern, especially in urban and riverine areas. The responsibility for the consequences of extreme weather events lies unidirectionally on the shoulders of the state, which can no longer guarantee the safety of its inhabitants. This thesis explores the use of serious games as a tool to enhance municipal flood risk communication and community adaptability in order to achieve a shared responsibility.

The research is carried out using the "WhereWeMove" serious game case study, developed to simulate flood scenarios and the homeowner’s decision-making process involved in flood risk management. The thesis seeks to answer the following research questions: How can municipalities use gaming, such as "WhereWeMove," to communicate with residents about the flood risks and related house adaptive measures? What are the implications of using such a gaming approach for the municipality? How can municipalities better involve citizens in co- creating flood risk management strategies through gaming?

To meet the research objective, a theoretical framework was used as a reference to identify key influential categories for the adoption of innovations by government organizations. The reference framework outlines five categories, with a focus on the organizational, individual, and innovation categories. The environmental category was primarily used as criteria for selecting the area of interest for this study, while the inter-organizational category was narrowed down to communication and co-creation practices, aligning with the focus of the WhereWeMove game.

To explore the way and extent in which the WhereWeMove game could be used as a communication tool, this thesis addresses the research questions through a dual qualitative analysis. The first step aimed to identify the extent to which co-creation is facilitated, based on results from a preliminary WhereWeMove session with students, conducted prior to playing the game with residents. The second step involved conducting interviews with municipal staff involved in planning adaptation strategies, to explore the perceived drivers and barriers to adopting the WhereWeMove game in their current practices.

In conclusion, the thesis demonstrates the potential of serious games as a transformative tool in municipal flood risk communication. By using the model resulting from the practice and theory, organizations can identify the key influential factors and transform barriers into drivers in order to use serious games within their institutions. Engaging citizens through interactive debriefing and collaborative gaming experiences allows co-creation with municipalities, enabling them to work together to test and refine policies, ultimately fostering a culture of preparedness and shared responsibility.

Climate change poses significant challenges to urban areas, necessitating innovative solutions to enhance resilience and sustainability. This research explores the adoption of green roofs by housing associations in Amsterdam, a city highly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as flooding, extreme rainfall, droughts and extreme temperatures. Despite the recognized benefits of green roofs, their implementation remains limited. This study aims to identify the factors influencing housing associations' decisions to install green roofs and evaluate the effectiveness of current policy instruments in promoting this practice. While current policy instruments such as subsidies, Weerproof and coercion are in place, the adoption of green roofs has not been done by housing associations. The overarching research question is: “How do policy instruments for the promotion of green roofs influence the behaviour of housing associations in Amsterdam?”
The research focuses on the case study of housing associations in Amsterdam, combining desk research, interviews with policy officers and interviews with major housing associations. The Behaviour Change Wheel, incorporating the COM-B model and Theoretical Domains Framework, serves as the theoretical framework to analyse behavioural drivers and barriers. This comprehensive framework allows for a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding the adoption of sustainable behaviours.
This research makes a contribution to the scientific literature through the use of the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) as a theoretical framework to analyse the adoption of green roofs by housing associations in Amsterdam. The BCW, typically applied within healthcare and behavioural sciences, is used in this study in a novel way within the context of urban sustainability and climate adaptation. By integrating the COM-B model and the Theoretical Domains Framework, this research provides in-depth insights into the behavioural drivers and barriers of housing associations. This methodological innovation broadens the applicability of the BCW and demonstrates its value for organizational behaviour change, specifically focused on sustainability and climate resilience.
Key findings indicate that while there is openness to the idea of green roofs among housing associations, significant barriers persist. These barriers include high installation costs, structural challenges, and a lack of knowledge about green roofs within housing associations. Current policies, such as subsidies and environmental guidelines, have not fully addressed these obstacles, particularly for existing buildings. For example, the subsidy availability has been inconsistent, which undermines the motivation for housing associations to commit to green roof projects. Additionally, while guidelines such as the “Nationale Dakenplan” have been established to promote green roofs, the lack of specific, targeted marketing and communication for housing associations limits their impact.
Reflective motivation is a primary barrier, with housing associations focusing on immediate and pressing needs like improving energy efficiency and addressing poor energy labels. This prioritization often leaves little room for green roofs, which are perceived as less critical. Financial constraints exacerbate this issue, as the high upfront costs of green roofs are often seen as prohibitive without sufficient subsidies or financial incentives. Moreover, housing associations often view the benefits of green roofs—such as increased biodiversity, urban heat island mitigation, and improved stormwater management—as less directly impactful on their primary goal of providing affordable housing.
The research highlights several intervention functions to overcome these barriers. These include enabling policies that integrate green roofs into energy label improvements, regional obligations for green roof implementation, targeted marketing campaigns, a stormwater runoff fee to create a business model for green roofs, and the promotion of comprehensive roof handbooks. Each of these interventions targets specific aspects of the COM-B model—capability, opportunity, and motivation—to encourage housing associations to incorporate green roofs more broadly.
By implementing these improvements, policy instruments can more effectively promote the adoption of green roofs, contributing to a more sustainable urban environment in Amsterdam. Further research should focus on validating these interventions in other cities to confirm their broader applicability. Additionally, evaluating the long-term impacts of these policies will provide insights into their effectiveness and inform future policy development.
Overall, the integration of comprehensive, targeted interventions can drive the widespread adoption of green roofs, enhancing urban resilience and sustainability in the face of climate change. This research provides a foundational understanding of the factors influencing green roof adoption and offers practical recommendations for policy enhancement to achieve a greener, more resilient urban landscape. 

Climate change is intensifying severe weather and flood hazards, putting riverfront residents at growing risk. Although existing public flood defences like dikes and nature-based solutions offer protection, recent events like those in Limburg in 2021 highlight the need to address flood risk at the homeowner level. With the expectation that homeowners must accept some flood risk, engaging them is crucial to tackling climate change's escalating impacts. Therefore, homeowners should implement private flood measures, but many fail to recognize the urgency. In the Netherlands, where a shared responsibility approach to flood risk management is evolving, provincial governments must engage homeowners to prepare for increasing flood risk. To do this, governments need insights into homeowners' preferences and motivations regarding public and private flood protection measures. This research addresses this need through a serious game and examines homeowner profiles and factors influencing private flood protection adoption.
The study begins with a literature review, incorporating theories like the Tiebout model and the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). The serious game "Where We Move" is selected, and techniques such as latent class analysis, ANOVA, and T-tests are used to determine homeowner profiles and influences on private flood measure adoption.
Three homeowner attitude profiles emerge: "Cautious Optimists," "Informed Preparers," and "Cautious Realists." These profiles reflect different knowledge levels and future flood expectations. Optimists are less likely to adopt private measures, suggesting that increasing knowledge, particularly about climate change's impact on floods, could heighten perceived threats and drive greater adoption.
Preferences for private measures are influenced by environmental benefits, personal advantages like aesthetics, and societal benefits. Financial means affect the type of measure chosen, with wealthier individuals opting for more expensive options. However, income levels do not impact the inclination to protect against flooding, highlighting that financial capabilities influence the measure's cost but not the protective response.
The level of public flood protection affects homeowners' residency choices. Generally, "grey" solutions like dikes are preferred, but low-income homeowners prioritize well-protected areas, even at a higher cost. High-income homeowners choose cheaper dike area houses and allocate their savings elsewhere.
Information about the risk reduction effect significantly influences private measure adoption, affecting homeowners' coping abilities. This aligns with research showing that informed decision-making leads to increased adoption. Homeowners are motivated when they perceive high threat levels, possess coping abilities, and take ownership of the risk. Flood experience influences the type of measure but not the adoption rate.
To address homeowners' lack of urgency, the study suggests improving communication strategies to emphasize how private measures reduce risks. Subsidies and collaborative initiatives can narrow the gap between high and low-income homeowners. Future research should explore intangible factors like psychological stress and denial and consider cost-effectiveness, familiarity, knowledge levels, and perspectives on future flooding.
While this research provides valuable insights, it acknowledges limitations in sample variation and size adequacy and doesn't delve into nuanced factors like psychological stress. Future research can build on these insights, refining flood risk mitigation strategies for safer and more resilient communities in the face of flooding.

Recent Conflict Early Warning Systems have found little evidence of predictive power of drought indicators for conflict prediction. However, this may result from the context-specificity of the drought-conflict relationship, as stressed in the more recent climate-conflict literature.

The present thesis assesses the local role of meteorological drought indicators for communal conflict prediction in North-Western Kenya, as a region where the narrative of resource-scarcity driven conflicts exists.

A local-scale literature review on conflict dynamics followed by a fixed-effects logistic regression modelling approach stress the importance of the spatial dimension when analysing drought-conflict relationships. The role of cross-border transhumance in linking climate variability to conflict occurrence is stressed by the lower confidence intervals and more significant effects when moving the regression analysis from the spatial delimitation of administrative units to the agency level of ethnic groups.

Differences in between ethnic groups in the obtained patterns of conflict behaviour in response to drought or water abundance are explained by their migratory behaviour along with a differentiated account of their relative drought vulnerability.

The lack of any considerable role of drought in the subsequently built quasi-replication of the WPS Global Early Warning Tool, is therefore assigned to the mismatch of administrative units as the spatial
unit of analysis in a pastoralist area, where herders frequently move their cattle to the other side of the border.

It is advocated for an ethnic-group centered approach to predicting conflict, which relaxes assumptions on spatial containment of conflict events. However, whether this alternative model specification leads
to a greater role of drought indicators in conflict prediction and better overall predictions, needs to be assessed in future work.

Transdisciplinary (TD) research plays a crucial role in addressing the complex challenges of climate adaptation. Despite popularisation of TD research, ambiguity remains in the specific implementation of this approach. As more projects aim to adopt TD approaches, more clarity is needed to structure the organisation and implementation of TD projects. This study aims to provide insight from practice on how challenges and successes can be addressed in TD projects. Through an in-depth investigation of three TD projects, this research explores the key components of TD projects, identifies main challenges and successes, and elicits stakeholders' suggested improvements. The study consists of a comprehensive analysis of literature, expert interviews, interview data, and focus group discussions. A theoretical framework is developed to define TD concepts and relationships, addressing the issue of diffuse definitions. The research highlights the importance of shared understanding among stakeholders, particularly in addressing cultural challenges and achieving inclusiveness. Stakeholders' differing perspectives on successes and challenges are observed, leading to the identification of common themes across projects. The results underscore the significance of existing relationships and collaboration in TD projects, contributing to successful outcomes. However, certain challenges, such as inflexible institutional regulations, are also shared across cases. The analysis highlights the need for more explicit reflection on successes and structured approaches for envisioning improvements. The study also reveals a divide between participants based on their backgrounds, suggesting the importance of promoting knowledge integration among diverse stakeholders. Overall, this study contributes to the advancement of TD research in climate adaptation, empowering stakeholders to navigate complex challenges and foster sustainable solutions.

Het beperken van overstromingsrisico’s is een grote maatschappelijke uitdaging, met name voor landen waar de dreiging van het water altijd dichtbij is. De groei van de economische activiteiten en het aantal inwoners van Nederland hebben aan de basis gestaan van het vaststellen van nieuwe overstromingsnormen. De ambitie is aan deze nieuwe veiligheidsnormen te voldoen door de komende 30 jaar zo’n twee derde van de 3.500 kilometer aan primaire waterkeringen te versterken, onder de vlag van het hoogwaterbeschermingsprogramma (HWBP). Het onderzoeksprogramma All-Risk, dat tussen 2017 en 2021 is uitgevoerd, heeft als doel bij te dragen aan de implementatie van de nieuwe risicobenadering. Na vijf jaar onderzoek presenteren we in dit boek de All-Risk resultaten voor dijkprofessionals en alle anderen die geïnteresseerd zijn in waterveiligheid. Het boek begint met de kansen en uitdagingen van de technische en juridische implementatie van de nieuwe Nederlandse risicogebaseerde benadering. Daarna behandelt elk hoofdstuk één van de vijf All-Risk onderzoekthema's. Hierin staan de belangrijkste uitkomsten van 15 PhD projecten, uitgevoerd aan vijf universiteiten samen met meer dan 30 partners van de overheid, onderzoeksinstituten, NGO's en de private sector. Elk hoofdstuk bevat verder verhaallijnen (storylines) over toepassingen in casestudies en wordt afgesloten met reflecties uit webinardiscussies met vertegenwoordigers uit onderzoek en praktijk.@en

Without our dikes and dunes, 60% of the Netherlands would flood on a regular basis. This area is home to 9 million people. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, February 2022) underlines the importance of reinforcing water safety. Sea levels are rising and extreme weather is becoming increasingly common. The Flood Protection Programme, the largest Dutch water safety operation since the Delta Works, will help us minimise the likelihood of flooding. New knowledge and innovation are urgently needed The Dutch dikes have stood firm for more than 1,000 years. After disasters in 1916 and 1953, storm surge barriers and dams have been added to the network of protective dikes. Following the floods in 1993 and 1995, the Room for the River programme was implemented. New knowledge of flood risks led to the introduction of new, often stricter standards for flood defences in 2017.@en

Without our dikes and dunes, 60% of the Netherlands would flood on a regular basis. This area is home to 9 million people. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, February 2022) underlines the importance of reinforcing water safety. Sea levels are rising and extreme weather is becoming increasingly common. The Flood Protection Programme, the largest Dutch water safety operation since the Delta Works, will help us minimise the likelihood of flooding. New knowledge and innovation are urgently needed The Dutch dikes have stood firm for more than 1,000 years. After disasters in 1916 and 1953, storm surge barriers and dams have been added to the network of protective dikes. Following the floods in 1993 and 1995, the Room for the River programme was implemented. New knowledge of flood risks led to the introduction of new, often stricter standards for flood defences in 2017.@en