The PREPARED Programme considers climate changes through a lens of urbanisation processes and urban water management1. It supposes that today's cities, and especially cities in industrialised countries, are not ready to face events resulting from climate changes such as increases in weather hazards (flooding, droughts) and their potential consequences (population migrations, etc.)2. This multidisciplinary research programme -including engineering and social sciences- focuses on the answers to bring forward when faced with these changes in terms of urban water management: modification of technical devices, reorganisation of services, changes in modes of government and decision-making, etc. It seeks to define new technical, organisational, and social norms and to consider possible modes for their diffusion3. The contribution of the team to the PREPARED Programme and in particular to Work Area 6, "Towards an Adaptive Water Sensitive City Future", relates to the latter aspect. It aims at better understanding possible conditions for a change in norms and paradigms in activities relative to urban water management, and thus a better understanding of favourable or unfavourable factors for planned changes. For this, it relies on an analysis of the diffusion of technical devices considered as alternatives to urban sewer systems since the 1970s
