Pilots are frequently used to explore the possibilities for policy innovation at a distance from the policy regime in a safe environment, but they can also function as a boundary organization and contribute to the development of trust, mutual understanding and reciprocity among different actors with different viewpoints. However, the question of how pilots' particular characteristics contribute to collaborative capacity building is as yet unanswered. A specific domain in which pilots are frequently used is the emerging domain of climate change adaptation. In the Netherlands, pilots are used to explore the possibilities of using a more risk-based approach to flood management. The traditional approach of preventing floods by dikes and dams is gradually being replaced by a risk-based approach called multilevel flood safety. In this approach, which is quite complex compared to the traditional prevention-oriented approach, flood risk management is based on three types of measures at different levels: preventing floods, adaptive spatial planning and emergency management The implementation of this new approach requires collaboration among different public authorities with different task orientations, legal competencies and resources. In 2013, three regional pilots were started to explore how this new concept could be applied. These pilots (in which collaboration was indispensable but also highly difficult because of the huge fragmentation of the policy arena) are analyzed in this paper to determine whether and how the specific functional context of a pilot project contributes to collaborative capacity building, which pilot characteristics contribute to this capacity, and which ones hinder its development. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
van Popering-Verkerk, J; van Buuren, A
Developing collaborative capacity in pilot projects: Lessons from three Dutch flood risk management experiments
Journal Of Cleaner Production