This study investigates the impact of an exhibition on natural hazards on risk awareness of the inhabitants of the Ubaye Valley in southern France. Risk communication practices need to be effective to contribute to disaster reduction, but their impact is rarely evaluated. Using a pre-test/post-test research design as well as a longitudinal study, changes in awareness of adults, teenagers and children were measured. The responses to a questionnaire were analyzed using non-parametric tests. The questionnaire dealt with several factors determining or influencing awareness: attitudes to risk, previous experiences of emergencies, exposure to awareness raising, ability to mitigate/prepare/respond, worry level, self-reported awareness, hard knowledge and demographic characteristics. Generally, risk awareness was higher after visiting the exhibition. The exhibition had most impact on visitors that had experienced few natural hazards or that were little informed a priori. In contrast to teenagers and children, the awareness of adults increased only for risk in general and not for specific natural hazards. Moreover, the results show that the exhibition was more effective in raising awareness of the hazards that occur rarely. For more frequent and more locally occurring hazards, such as debris flows, other means of communication should be considered.

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the drivers and constraints for effective cross-sectoral collaboration in river basin management and the extent to which factors identified in related literature determine success or failure of collaboration in selected case studies. Cases selected were from industrialized and densely populated catchments, where trade offs across human activities are particularly intense. This article focuses on three sub-basins: one in the Dutch section of the Rhine; a second in the German section of the Rhine; and a third in China’s Zhujiang (Pearl River) basin. This selection, inspired by the work of the EU-China River Basin Management Programme (2007–2012), enabled a comparative analysis on two levels: (a) between the Chinese and the European sub-basins in order to better understand collaborative forms of management in two very different basin governance regimes; (b) between the two European cases in the Rhine in order to assess how collaborative arrangements vary within the same basin. Empirical work enquired into how cross-sectoral collaboration operates in key catchment management processes; what drivers lie behind collaboration initiatives; and whether obstacles hinder the emergence of collaboration. Our findings highlight various mechanisms through which the wider formal and informal institutional contexts, and processes of institutional interplay, influence more proximate factors identified in the literature. Furthermore, our research illustrates the central role that actor networks and the state play in initiating and sustaining collaboration in water management and river basin governance.