ABSTRACT
Governments frequently make promises to their citizens; few promises are as powerful as that of safety and security. The promise of flood protection is often absolute and in concrete. Dikes and dams, drains and diversions are widely seen as key to flood protection. Flood management is portrayed as a technical and apolitical exercise of flood prevention. Issues of why some groups are more vulnerable than others and how risks may be reallocated by interventions are ignored (e.g. Lebel and Sinh, 2007).
