land use planning and management in ......approaches such as synthetic indicators of multiple...
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LAND USE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT INHAZARDOUS AREAS: FINDINGS ANDPERSPECTIVES FOR THE FUTURE PROPOSEDBY THE ARMONIA PROJECT
Prepared by Claudio Margottini, Scira Menoni with the contribution ofGiuseppe Delmonaco, Adriana Galderisi, Darren Lumbroso on the basis ofthe 6 reports of the ARMONIA project.
ARMONIA PROJECTContract n° 511208
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LAND USE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT IN HAZARDOUSAREAS: FINDINGS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR THE FUTUREPROPOSED BY THE ARMONIA PROJECT1
Contents
Summary …………………………………………………………………………………….. p. 4
1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………. p. 4
2. What natural hazards scientists could do to support planningdecisions according to the results of the ARMONIA project ……….. p. 62.1. Multi-hazard and land use planning and management…………… p. 6
3. Land use planning in hazardous areas: the challenge ofintegration………………………………………………………………………………………………. p. 103.1. Need for disciplinary integration to develop tools usefulfor land-use planners…………………………………………………………………………….. p. 123.1.1. Hazard oriented preventative measures………………………………………. P. 133.1.2. Exposure oriented preventative measures……………………………………. P. 143.1.3. Vulnerability oriented preventative measures………………………………. P. 153.1.4. Risk-oriented prevention measures……………………………………………….. p. 17
3.2. Scale and time factors………………………………………………………………….. p. 183.2.1. Scale factors……………………………………………………………………………………. p. 183.2.2. Time factors……………………………………………………………………………………. p. 19
3.3. The importance of land ownership control policies inthe prevention of natural risk………………………………………………………………. P. 213.3.1.Safety as a public good…………………………………………………………………… p. 213.3.2. Planning tools to achieve prevention…………………………………………….. p. 23
4. The designed DSS to support planning decisionsin risky areas……………………………………………………………………………………. P. 244.1. The methodological framework………………………………………………….. p. 244.2. DSS structure and functionality……………………………………………………. P. 274.3.Hazard analysis stage: parameters to assess hazard……………… p. 274.3.1. Simplified approach at the regional scale………………………………………. P. 284.3.2. Approach at the local scale……………………………………………………………… p. 29
1 This report was prepared and written in large part by ClaudioMargottini and Scira Menoni wih the contributionof Adriana Galderisi, Darren Lumbroso and Giuseppe Delmonaco who added new material made on purpose forthis report. Parts of previous reports have been reported and quoted if authors were different from the alreadymentioned editors and contributors. Authors are particularly grateful also to Katja Firus for coordination, FionaTweed fro language revision and Sarah Massah for graphical revision.
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4.4. Exposed elements and systems to be analyzed…………………………… p. 314.4.1. Exposed elements at the regional scale…………………………………….. p. 314.42. Exposed elements at the local scale…………………………………………….. p. 32
4.5. Exposure and vulnerability assessment……………………………………………. p. 334.5.1. Exposure and vulnerability assessment at a regional scale…………. P. 334.5.2. Exposure and vulnerability assessment at the local scale…………… p. 34
4.6. Multiple criteria risk evaluation……………………………………………………….. p. 34
4.6. Multiple criteria risk evaluation……………………………………………………….. p. 354.6.1. Vulnerability curves………………………………………………………………………. P. 354.6.2. Damage matrix approach……………………………………………………………… p. 37
4.7. Multiple criteria risk evaluation, also taking into accountthe coping capacity of exposed systems…………………………………………………. P. 38
5. First application of the DSS………………………………………………………………….. p. 415.1. Application at the regional scale……………………………………………………….. p. 415.2. Application at the local scale……………………………………………………………… p. 43
6. Preliminary conclusions…………………………………………………………………………… p. 44
7. Bibliographical references……………………………………………………………………. p. 45
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SummaryThis document explains the steps that have been followed in theARMONIA project and its main results. As any synthesis document it is aselective representation of the many outputs of the project and the manydirections that it took according to the interests of each involved partner.The main points that will be addressed here are as follows:
- Firstly, the question of the kind of support scientists may provideto planners regarding decisions to be taken in risky areas will beaddressed. In particular the need to move from multi-hazard tomulti-risk approaches will be pointed out, so as to better representthe complex reality of settlements that may be exposed to avariety of different threats.
- The second chapter will focus on planning in risky areas, takingadvantage of the cross-national comparison amongst various UEcountries that were analysed within the ARMONIA project. Threeelements will be stressed: the need for integration, both from adisciplinary and an administrative point of view; the need foradequate consideration of spatial and temporal factors; thequestion of land ownership.
- The third chapter will illustrate the structure of the decisionsupport system (DSS) that has been designed within the ARMONIAproject. The DSS attempts to incorporate a) needs arising from theplanning field b) scientific results from the hazards researchcommunity and c) recent advancements in exposure andvulnerability assessment.
- Finally, a first application of the DSS will be outlined andpreliminary conclusions proposed for the attention of the reader.
1. Introduction
Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides and earthquakes, can havesevere consequences for people, property and the environment. Thevulnerability of populated areas to natural disaster is in part aconsequence of decades of spatial planning policies which have failed totake proper account of hazards and risks in land-use zoning anddevelopment decisions. For this reason, bringing together knowledge,technology and specific actors (data providers, information providers,data/information management and end users) is critically important inthe field of risk assessment and land-use zoning for natural disasterprevention and mitigation. Establishing reliable models and managinginformation effectively will contribute to the reduction of human sufferingdue to natural disasters, both in Europe and other parts of the world.
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Current methods and practices in land-use planning and managementcan reduce the impacts of natural disasters by:
- selecting the areas most suitable for further urban development;
- evaluating the vulnerability of infrastructures located in uninhabitedareas;
- identifying and applying the most appropriate adaptation andmitigation strategies for existing buildings, including the rehabilitationand re-use of existing urban structures (e.g. old industrial buildings).
The overall goal of ARMONIA is to provide the European Commissionwith a set of harmonised methodologies for producing integrated riskmaps that can be used to achieve more informed and effective spatialplanning procedures in areas prone to natural disasters in Europe.More precisely, ARMONIA has focused on five main objectives:
• the integration and optimisation of methodologies for hazard and riskassessment for different types of potentially disastrous events (e.g.earthquakes, floods, landslides, fires, heavy rainfall);
• the integration of different processes of risk mapping in order tostandardise data collection, data analysis, monitoring, outputs andterminology in a form useful to end users (multi-risk assessment);
• the design/proposal of a harmonised decision-making tool structurefor applying hazard and risk mitigation through spatial planning inrisk-prone areas;
• the development of guidelines on natural hazard mitigation in thecontext of the EU Environmental Assessment Directive(2001/42/EC);
• a contribution to the implementation of natural hazard awarenessinto the improvement of Environmental Assessment policy (e.g. EUEnvironmental Assessment Directive - 2001/42/EC).
In order to achieve those objectives, ARMONIA followed a rather simplemethodological framework divided in a number of steps:
a. State-of-the-art of European standards for spatial planning;
a. Analysis of current methodologies for assessment and mapping ofnatural hazards and risks;
a. Development of a methodology for harmonised integrated maps;
a. Development of a harmonised knowledge base of terminology;
a. Integration of harmonised risk maps with spatial planning decisionprocesses into a DSS design;
a. Implementation, integration and analysis of a case study simulation;
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2. What natural hazards scientists could do to support planningdecisions according to the results of the ARMONIA project
The analysis of the state-of-the-art on multi-hazard and multi-riskassessment from international researches and practical applicationsprovided evidence for the following main considerations, useful for thedevelopment of the ARMONIA approach:
a . Several approaches and applications refer to the US FederalEmergency Management Agency specific software (Hazus, designedfor estimating potential losses from disasters) [f1]for managing data,analysing results and producing integrated maps for some disastertypes.
b . None of the analysed studies produce a rigorous multi-hazardscenario. Only few approaches propose a multiple risk approach basedon integration of vulnerability indicators with linear overlaying ofsingle types of natural hazards.
c. A rigorous multi-hazard approach cannot be simply based onsuperimposition of distinct hazard maps since a multi-hazard analysisincorporates single hazardous events as well as their mutualinterrelations and interdependence. Theoretically, this is a time andmoney-consuming task, whereas in practical terms synopticalinventory maps of various natural events can be easily produced.
d. It is widely accepted that any methodological approach that strictlydepends on the scale of analysis and representation (local, regional,national scale), should be structured and developed following thescale and data resolution.
e. Data sets should be possibly homogeneous, spatially representativeand continuous in terms of availability of temporal series of data, inorder to avoid large errors in spatial analysis and representation offrequency and occurrence of hazard events.
f. All advanced methods tend towards development and implementationof a GIS-based Decision Support System (specific software) forpotential end-users and stakeholders.
g . Complexity of approaches tends to increase as a function of thenumber of hazard types considered.
h. Vulnerability analysis is rarely carried out in a satisfactory fashion.i. Multi-risk approaches rarely produce estimations in terms of monetary
loss and damage in accordance with the theoretical definition of risk.
2.1. Multi-hazard and land use planning and management
The other important issue of ARMONIA is the investigation of potentialdifferent hazards integration for the development of an actual multi-hazard risk assessment. Presently, according to restricted international
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experience and state-of-the-art on this specific topic, there is not anyconsolidated definition of “multi-hazard”. It is possible to find thefollowing solutions:
a . synthetic indicator of the heuristic degree of multiple hazardsaffecting a given territory (e.g. high, medium, low) or integernumber of affecting natural hazards or simplified multiple layers(hazards) summary map;
b. an integrated indicator of damage/losses, summing up, for a giventime period (or heuristically), multiple risks, individually evaluated;
c. holistic approach of managing different hazards (e.g. to investigateall of the contemporary hazards affecting a given territory);
d. domino effects (e.g. landsliding induced by an earthquake).
Figure 1 – Classification of reported multi-hazard risk methodologies, according to
international publications and state-of-the-art (ARMONIA project).
Approaches such as synthetic indicators of multiple hazards, number ofhazards and multiple layer summary maps are mainly referred to at theregional scale (see Figure 1).Holistic approaches and domino effects can be seen at local scale wherethe “resolution” of investigation is comparable with the geometricaldimension of the natural phenomenon. In this case the expecteddamage/losses can derive from a comparison between hazardidentification and exposed elements or, in minor cases, as a consequenceof a vulnerability assessment that characterises the exposed element atrisk (e.g. population, property) to an extent of injury and damage thatmay result from a natural event of a given intensity in a given area.
M/Hsyntheticindicator
M/Hoverlay
mapM/H
number ofhazards
M/Rsyntheticindicators
M/Rholistic
approachM/H
dominoeffects
regional
local
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
n. case studies
reported approaches
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It is also evident that regional approaches are mainly simplifiedmethodologies with simplified data. Local approaches, mainly multi-risk,are rigorous methodologies, sometimes simplified in the synthesis output,with rigorous data. ARMONIA tried whenever possible to elaboraterigorous methodologies with rigorous data. Where this was not possible(i.e. at a regional scale) the adoption of rigorous methodology withsimplified data has been pursued.One major question is: do we need multi-hazard or multi-risk in land-useplanning and management? Before arriving at the answer there is theneed to clarify that the main target of a mitigation plan is to produce astrategy for avoiding or mitigating harm from natural disasters and forrecovering from them.In many communities hazard mitigation plans are prepared byemergency management staff members and are not related tocomprehensive plans. The products are separate, stand-alone hazardmitigation plans. Since the mitigation studies and related plans have tobe adherent to the real nature of phenomena and to the response ofexisting structures, it is probably very useful to consider all the hazardsholistically, maybe not synthetically. Domino effects can be consideredrelevant due to the complexity of modern society.A synthetic view can be used as preliminary approach at regional level,only for some kind of special planning purposes (e.g. planning the majorconcentration of rescue materials and medicines in the area where thehighest number of victims is expected in a given time window). At localscale, the synthetic view can be elaborated for well-identified targets (i.e.buildings) for which a response to different intensities of naturalphenomena can be established (vulnerability). In any case, it is clear thatany mitigation plan for sustainable land-use planning and managementhas to consider hazard identification, vulnerability assessment and riskanalysis.From this, it is stated that full-scale risk analysis has not been usedextensively, possibly because planners and practitioners are less familiarwith risk analysis concepts and methods, and because of the relativepaucity of land-use management tools that are based on riskassessments also considering vulnerability. Is this situation the sameacross Europe? If this is the case, it is indispensable to strengthen thisdirection, together with hazard identification in land-use planning.It was clearly recognized in the ARMONIA project that the state-of-the-art at the regional level is to use a qualitative hazard assessment and aqualitative ranking of damage (high medium, low, etc); the onlyquantitative assessment that is generally produced is the number ofvictims expected as a consequence of given natural phenomena. To thisfigure a return period of each type of hazard is usually associated as well.With respect to the letter, it is necessary to clarify what time intervals
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have to be considered for land use planning purposes. As urbanised landwill remain such for very long time, longer than most of individualbuildings, choosing to consider short versus long return period is nottrivial. Frequent events will provoke repeated losses but will also allowbetter community adjustments. Rare events, such as large volcaniceruptions, may completely disrupt a community and destroy much of itsassets. If the latter have a long “life” as is generally case, especially inEurope, even long return period events must be carefully analyzed, not tomention the fact that “long” or “short” time intervals are such onlyprobabilistically and do not represent a certainty.[f3]
The local general and local detailed approach suffers from the sameproblem: hazard is, in some way, assessable; risk can be inferredqualitatively, combining the severity of the hazard and the exposedelements. No connection to vulnerability is usually made. This problem isrelevant for many natural hazards, however, in the case of seismic andflood risks, a step forward has been produced towards a better definitionof risk assessment. For example, in the case of seismicity, the risk iscalculated according to the following principle:
1. the hazard (H) is given in terms of expected intensity (oracceleration or velocity) for a given return period and with a givenprobability to be exceeded;
2. the expected intensity is compared with the expected damageobtained in similar engineering constructions and typology(vulnerability) and then, compared in a fragility chart whereprobability of damage and typology is a function of the macroseismicintensity.
3. Finally the expected risk is given in terms of probability of expecteddamage, for a given engineering construction and typology, for agiven return period (a function of the expected growth of disasterevents in terms of intensity, acceleration, velocity etc.).
According to the above state-of- the-art and the outcomes of ARMONIA,it is quite evident that any hazard has a proper specificity. For thepossibility of integrating them in a single parameter, the study of multiplehazards is behind the scientific state-of-the-art. They may constitute ageneric reference to orient decisions but cannot be taken as reliableindications of the actual hazard level.[f4]Therefore rigorous multi-hazard maps are very difficult to design,unless they deal with very simple qualitative small scale or general maps(e.g. natural hazard in a given country or continent, mostly based on aninventory of natural disasters).A multi-layered hazard map, without aggregating hazards, can beproduced by overlaying single hazard maps, using a GIS environment.The most famous is the world map of natural hazards produced by
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Munich-Re. This kind of approach is interesting for visualising the wholeview of all phenomena in a unique map. A different thing is theclassification of various hazards into the same number of degrees, andthen the mathematical integration of them to produce a single map. Thiskind of approach is scientifically unsound, since it is merging togetherdifferent physical phenomena.On the other hand the holistic approach in the management of differenthazards (e.g. to investigate all of the contemporary hazards affecting agiven territory) can be defined as an important operational tool, e.g. tohelp spatial planners to detect areas where no hazards are likely to occuras well as areas where two or more types of natural events may occur. AGIS may strongly support this practice and the result is highly beneficialfor the rationalisation of competences and expertise presently spread inmany institutions. This last aspect reveals an other important problem: inthe new millennium, further development of the computer programs andtools of the previous decade, as well as the internet and thedevelopment of the “information society”, is leading to widedissemination of data and information (data implying unprocessedmaterial and information the outcome of analysis). New actors haveappeared, namely information managers. They are mainly computerexperts, competent in the management of large amounts of informationand data, but usually without specialist expertise in the subject. Suchactors are now becoming the contact point between the scientificcommunity and the end user. It is a logical development, since they arenot heirs to conflicts between different scientific schools and opinions.On the other hand, since information managers are generally not mastersof the technical domain which they are dealing with, the outputs may notbe realistic. In hazard and risk assessment, the result must reflect thechosen methodology, the scale of the investigation processes, the scaleof chosen output and the margin for errors in estimation and largeuncertainties not obvious in the original data and information.
3. Land-use planning in hazardous areas: the challenge ofintegration.
The ARMONIA project has examined different case studies and differentexperiences within EU countries regarding land-use planning andmanagement in areas exposed to natural hazards. In order to achieveadvancement in land-use planning practices in risky areas, three mainissues should be considered:a. the need for integration from a scientific point of view, but also
among agencies and different branches of public administrations incharge of various preventative actions;
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b. the relevance of space and time factors in the consideration of risks,that are dynamic components of modern societies;
c. the only apparently more technical issue of land-ownership regime,the control of which determines the type and quality of preventionthat can be achieved.
The latter issues derive from the results of the above-mentioned cross-national analysis, from the elicited[f5] lessons learnt from the analysedcases, sometimes positive sometimes negative, in the context of abroader – though not very extensive – available literature.The ARMONIA project has identified the need for three layeredintegration in risk management.The first two levels are “scientific” and will be further discussed in thenext chapters. The first level of integration is among disciplines that havebeen studying hazards separately until now, without taking into accountthe possibility that they may affect the same settlement or even beenchained in a given event; the second level of integration requires theassessment of risk as the result of hazard and vulnerability of exposedterritorial systems and therefore should include in the analysis thefeatures of cities, infrastructures and facilities located in a hazardouszone.The third level of integration is institutional. One of the main obstacles topreventing risk in ordinary land use and spatial planning systems derivesfrom the fragmentation of competences in relation to risk identification,analysis and management. Furthermore, risk prevention has beeninterpreted in most European countries as a “sectoral” activity, to beadministered by bureaus specialised in such areas as watershedmanagement, seismic risk prevention and hydrogeological risks.«In this context the so-called “problem of interplay” has been pointedout: most institutions interact with others both horizontally and vertically.Horizontal interactions occur at the same level of social organisation(regional planning and the several sectoral planning authorities). Verticalinterplay is a result of cross-scale interactions or links involvinginstitutions located at different levels of social organisation (centralgovernmental agencies, regional governments, local authorities dealingwith different aspects of risk and land use).Interplay between or among institutions may take the form of functionalinterdependencies or arise as a consequence of politics of institutionaldesign and management. The problem of interplay is a consequence of amultitude of actors who are dealing with spatially relevant issue in acertain area » (Greiving et al., 2005, p. C-23).One may continue quoting Platt (1999) again: «Issues of overlap,competition and cross purposes arise among different entities, adding tothe cost of accomplishing pre- and post- disaster actions. […] Each of themajor participating agencies is itself an organism of infinite and ever
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changing complexity, comprising sub-agencies, offices, programs,divisions, branches and units» (p. 277-278).[f6]
Therefore, in order to improve the current situation, there is a need forinstitutional integration as well, in order to make sure that data,information be available to assess and manage the whole chain of risk(including multiple risks and different types of vulnerabilities).[f8]
Some of the reconstruction experiences proposed in the context of theARMONIA project achieved such integration as a result of the pressure torehabilitate and improve the pre-disaster situation thanks to special lawsand provisions created to tackle the exceptional situation created by theevent. What should be achieved is a real governance of risks, includingintegrated public administration and new generation of laws, possiblyneither sectoral nor created to tackle exceptional times.
3.1. Need for disciplinary integration to develop tools useful forland-use planners
If the definition of risk as a combination of hazard and vulnerability ofexposed systems can be agreed upon, and if it is a common achievementthat risk can be measured in terms of expected damage (no matter howexpressed, if in monetary units or in indexes, etc.), one may ask on whatlevels and key parameters planning may act on.Despite the fact that to have a unique, synthetic risk measure may seemvery powerful and elegant, one must consider that planning is a much“dirtier” activity, mixing together all types of considerations that aresocially and physically relevant in an area, despite the fact that the lattercan be hardly compared on a common unit scale. This leads to theappreciation of the fact that planners may act on several risk-relatedaspects (see table 1): on the hazard component, on the exposure, on thevulnerability of exposed systems as well as, to a certain extent, on theoverall risk. This means, first of all, that there is the need for muchimproved integration among evaluations and analyses that are producedby various disciplines. From the overall review of planning instruments atthe European level, it became clear that, in most of them, a single-hazard approach is taken, without considering neither potentialenchainment effects among different threats nor the other relevantcomponent of risk, that is the vulnerability of exposed systems. What canbe found at best (as in the French case of the Plan de Prévention desRisques) is the appreciation of exposure.To a certain extent this occurs because «of the diverse responsibilities ofsectoral planning divisions for different natural hazards» (Greiving, 2005,p. C-1), [f9]but it also reflects the current state of disaster studies, inwhich scarce integration and confrontation exist among experts ofdifferent fields. The largest gaps can be easily recognised between social
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scientists on the one side and engineers and hard sciences on the other.Nevertheless, also here, divisions and separation is the rule instead ofthe exception.The following paragraphs will be devoted to briefly extend this statement.
Table 1. Synthesis of mitigation measures that are relevant to land-use
planning and management
3.1.1. Hazard-oriented preventative measures
One of the outputs that hazard analysis provides is relevant informationcharacterising the kind of natural stress that may impact on a givenenvironment. It addresses the main factors permitting the descriptionand forecasting of a natural phenomenon accepting a given level ofuncertainty.Information regarding the hazard may lead to two types of measures:firstly to address the hazard severity or probability in an attempt toreduce one or both, therefore limiting the potential for the naturalphenomena itself. Secondly, the information regarding existing hazards ina given area may constitute important information for planners, as will bediscussed later on.
risk factor addressed type of measure scale type of planning influence barriers
hazard structural measures local (may have an sectoral plans may include - structural measures mayinfluence at other structural measures induce false sense ofscales as well) - it would be better if plans safety
include such measures as - they imply a residual part of the features of the risk settlements
exposure - avoidance of hazardous regional and local direct in comprehensive plans - strong market pressure hotspots (though hotspots are as well as in detailed plans to develop some areas
provided at different (zoning prescriptions) especialy when the latterscales) are in nice/valuable locations
- relocation local (but it is worthy direct in comprehensive plans - many constraints to relocation:to prioritize at a regional as well as in detailed plans economic, administrative,scale) social
- reduce population as above direct in comprehensive plans - some constraints as above density as well as in detailed plans
vulnerability -buildings physical vulne- local (but can be prioritized in sectoral plans but can be - there is a certain cost to rability reduction regionally) included as a recommendation sustain (by the private sector)
- lifelines physical vulne- as above or requirement in compre- - cost to be payed by companies rability reduction hensive plans and the public sector- lifelines physical vulne- as above in sectoral pans but can be - cost to be payed by the public rability reduction included as a recommendation sector
in comprehensive plans-public facilities physical as above vulnerability reduction
coping capacity - increasing systems regional and local in sectoral plans mainly, may be - different sectors and companies redundancies introduced as a recommendation involved- reducing systems absolute regional and local in comprehensive plans - as above and requires many interdependency efforts (organisational and - improving people's wealth local indirect financial)- improving people's access local in comprehensive plans to services and resources- improving "risk culture" local indirect (as part of participatory
processes)
risk in terms of - insurance local and regional (national) indirect - it may constitute an incentive expected damage towards risky behaviours
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Generally these types of measures are taken in sectoral plans, (forexample watershed plans) while they may enter into comprehensiveplans only in the form of acquired information.Structural measures are aimed at reducing the hazard potential: forinstance, levees and dams have been built to protect downstream oradjacent communities from floods; consolidation and drainage systemshave been developed to make slopes more stable, barriers have been putto divert lava flows and protect settlements, etc. This type of measure,though very efficacious in some instances, also has its own limitations.In some cases, like earthquakes or tsunami, there is not much one cando to reduce the severity or the potential of hazards and the only way isto protect people, cities, villages and infrastructures from their direct andindirect impact.Even when such protection can be put in place, an important drawback isthe resulting over-confidence in their potential to actually protectexposed communities at whatever hazard severity level. This over-confidence leads to risky behaviours, increasing the overall community’sexposure and vulnerability to events that, though rare, are not impossibleand which are beyond the “acceptable level of risk” explicitly or implicitlyset by any built defence system.Another factor limiting the perspectives looking only at the hazardcomponent relates to the fact that many places are exposed to a varietyof hazards at a time. This is particularly true for some Southern Europeanregions, where a given territory may be seismic, volcanic, exposed tofloods and landslides or avalanches. In such cases exposure andvulnerability concerns become a priority, in terms of building a resilientterritory and society, as addressing all existing hazards in a given sitewould be unaffordable.The second type of input hazard studies may provide planners with isinformation regarding where natural threats are particularly relevant,what would be the total surface affected by an event and if there arelocations with higher hazardous potential (as in the case of amplificationzones in seismic areas). This type of information may be used in twoways: to avoid future development in natural/rural areas, that have notyet been urbanized,; to recognise the most critical situations so as totake action with respect to whatever already exists thus reducingexposure and/or vulnerability in developed areas.
3.1.2. Exposure-oriented prevention measures
Exposure analysis provides information regarding the number of people,the extension of settlements and the value of goods threatened by agiven hazard. The most evident measure of such information that can betaken on the ground is relocation. Moving goods, infrastructures, people
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away from dangerous sites can be an answer. Relocation decisions,similarly to those aimed at avoiding future exposure in an area that hasbeen recognised as hazardous, may occasionally conflict with the actualsituation faced on the ground: several places are exposed contemporarilyto a variety of hazards and it is not always easy to decide whether not tobuild at all or to relocate large parts of existing settlements.Nevertheless, it cannot be neglected that while avoiding future exposuredoes not imply disruption of already existing communities, relocationbrings much higher costs, not only monetary but also social,psychological and political.Relocation has been proposed as an acceptable strategy in the USA afterthe 1993 flood, when 15% of the total amount of reconstruction fundswas explicitly devoted to relocation. Examples are available also inEurope, like in Italy, where a national law (267/1998 issued after thedramatic debris flows killing a hundred people in the Sarno area in theCampania Region) calls for incentives to relocate dwellings andparticularly industries exposed to critical hydrogeological hazards. Sincethen some regions have either adopted legislation to enforce voluntaryrelocation projects (Emilia Romagna and Valle d’Aosta) or havecommissioned studies to establish criteria to help the regionalgovernment in promoting relocation programs (Lombardia).Another measure may be labeled as “partial relocation”, in the attempt toreduce human pressure on a hazardous area, in other words reducingpopulation density. This was attempted in the Vesuvian area inCampania, where incentives were given particularly to renters to look forapartments in other sites less exposed to volcanic threat.Another example that can be quoted refers to the French “droit dedelaissement”, the right according to which a land owner in a highlyhazardous area can ask the municipality to acquire his property at a pricethat does not take in account the depreciation due to the existingdangers (see Renard, 2007).In responding to the basic question of what type of prevention measurescan be foreseen upon exposure analyses, two main options are theanswer: avoidance of particularly hazardous sites for futuredevelopments and relocation for already built-up zones.Comprehensive planning is in both cases the best tool to be adopted,using zoning and deciding whether a given settlement or part of it shouldbe built again and in what manner.
3.1.3. Vulnerability-oriented prevention measures
If vulnerability is intended as a measure of susceptibility, fragility,weakness, it constitutes a qualification of exposed elements and systems;it permits differentiation between one exposed element and another on
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the basis of the intrinsic characteristics of the elements at stake. It istherefore a rather powerful tool in the hands of planners, as it suggeststhe idea that risk may be increased or decreased acting on the way cities,facilities, infrastructures are built and not only deciding a “yes or no”policy, in other words, a limitation policy only. Recommendations andprescriptions to improve the quality of exposed elements and systems isa crucial point in addressing prevention through land-use planning andmanagement.Examining what has been proposed until now in literature, two types ofvulnerability can be distinguished: physical vulnerability and systemicvulnerability (or the coping capacity of a system).Physical vulnerability describes how prone a given object is to bedamaged when hit by a certain natural stressor (e.g. earthquake,avalanche or flood). The resistance capacity depends on the type ofstress, but generally it refers much more to the concept of “goodconstruction” and the like. In some cases, like seismic risks, such ruleshave been codified long ago and constitute the core of building codes orstandards for bridges and other type of facilities. This type of indication isgenerally better incorporated into a local detailed plan or local sectoralplan, like for example in Italy, the restoration plan.Beyond physical vulnerability, though, other coping capacity factors mustbe considered, related to the settled environment on one side and to theexposed community and its institutions on the other.Enhancing the coping capacity of an urban or regional system is not atask that can be left to planners only: the latter may often have only anindirect influence on such factors. In particular, by being aware ofinterconnections among systems, of interdependence factors, plannersmay well decide the best locations for critical facilities as well asaddressing activity and transportation loads in such a way to minimizethe potential for indirect and secondary effects, due to theinterconnection amongst systems. Social factors, like age classes,presence of weak groups, accessibility to resources and strategic facilitiesare also factors on which planning, though indirectly, may have aninfluence. These types of measures are generally part of the strategicpolicy behind a comprehensive plan or strategic framework in thosecountries and regions where such tools exist.What land use planners and managers can certainly do is to take intoaccount the potential for enchained effects; i.e. those that make naturalevents a trigger for technological accidents (for example).Vulnerability is clearly a concept that cannot be excluded once alreadyexisting urban areas are analyzed. In Europe, for example, this is truenot only for modern cities, but especially for the protection of monumentsand historic centres, that deserve to be protected also against natural
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hazards that are menacing the preservation of a cultural and historicpatrimony, which represents a richness for the EU as a whole.Nevertheless, the vulnerability concept is not relevant only for alreadybuilt up areas, but also for future settlements, in the sense that the lattermay be designed and built in a more or less resilient fashion, dependingnot only on location and site considerations, but also on how they will belaid out in a space and actually constructed. In France, for example, thePlan de prévention des risques to be prepared for each municipalityexposed to some kind of risk (natural and technological) providesrecommendations and prescriptions concerning design, planning andeven architectural options to minimise the vulnerability of exposedelements, to be built or already in existence.
3.1.4. Risk-oriented prevention measures
While it is certainly clear that planners may act on one risk component ata time (that is on hazard, exposure and vulnerability factors), even whenconsidering all of them, it is worth mentioning that there are somemeasures that can be taken to address the expected damage per se. Thelatter are the so called ‘risk transfer’ and ‘risk sharing’ tools, that do notreduce the damage, but provide some ways to mitigate their impact onthe community, by finding strategies (particularly financial) to permitquick recovery and at reasonable costs.The most “famous” of such tools is certainly insurance, a powerful risktransfer mechanism aimed at transferring to a third party (the insurer)part or all of the risk by paying a premium and expecting compensationwhenever the feared event occurs. While this prevention measure cannotbe considered a land-use planning or management tool per se, it is ofrelevance to it, if premiums are set at differentiated levels to make themcorrespond to expected levels of damage and therefore require someaction to reduce those levels in order either to enter an insuranceprogram or to lessen the amount to be paid. An example of positiveintegration between insurance, natural hazards and land-use planning isprovided by the USA Nfip program run by FEMA. In this insurance model,private owners cannot insure their house autonomously if theirmunicipality or their county is not insured as well. In their turn,municipalities and counties can enter the insurance program only if theyagree to enforce mitigation measures, reducing the pressure on areasareas prone to flooding, by relocating public facilities, excluding themfrom further development and providing incentives to private owners torelocate from the most dangerous areas.Although the balance of almost thirty years of such policy is not asfavorable as expected before the 1993 Mississippi flood, still it has beenrecognized that it had impact onthe vulnerability of buildings, by forcingelevation above the flooding level.
18
3.2. Scale and time factors
3.2.1. Scale factors
The concept of scale is very relevant in planning. It conveys a far broadermeaning than just a dimensional factor enlarging or stretching the detailat which a given object is looked at or at which the earth surface isreduced in a map.The concept of scale incorporates at least three different aspects. Thefirst is closer to its “geometrical” interpretation: it refers to the fact thatsome features while rather evident when looked at from a short distancefade away on a larger scale, but also, vice-versa, some patterns that mayappear very clearly at a larger scale, loose their meaning whenfragmented in a number of smaller zooms.The second interpretation leads to the recognition of substantially multi-scalar elements or processes or features, that may be well-understoodonly by crossing up and down the various scales. This is particularly truefor economic forces shaping given environments. While the localisation ofsome factories may appear purely occasional when considered locally, atlarger scale their relation to access ways, to other factories, facilities,markets, services may become much more evident. Secchi (2000) statesthat one of the main and most difficult task planners currently perform isthe constant verification of what they are doing at one scale with theconsequences for, or the influences of/on, other related scales.The third interpretation is a more political one, and refers to theadministrative, governmental level in charge of one scale or another. Inthis sense, scales can be identified with some administrative structures,such as regions, counties, provinces, municipalities.The cross comparison of planning systems in European countries carriedout in WP 1 by the ARMONIA project permitted to recognise two mainadministrative levels that must be considered at the very least (seeFleischhauer et al., 2006):
- local, where local refers to municipalities;
- regional.
Each administrative level is represented in a plan or even a set of plans,the validity of which is determined by physically drawn borders (as in thecase of watershed plans) or by political entities (as in the case ofprovincial or regional plans).The concept of scale is one that unifies planning and risk assessment andmanagement; natural events and their direct, indirect and secondaryeffects cross administrative borders and require the simultaneousconsideration of different scales as Secchi suggests for planners’ work.
19
According to Gunderson and Holling (2002, p.68), the concept of scale isequally important from an environmental/ecological point of view:«issues, problems, and opportunities are not just local; they can haveintegrated causes from processes at several scales. Some of those arelocal and are perceived locally. Some can originate half a world away,formed by geopolitical hemispheric policies, world trade, and climatechange». It is therefore crucial to «understand how these cross-scaleprocesses shape ecological and social dynamics».Common to all those interpretations is the notion that larger scales notonly may show patterns and processes that are not recognisable locally,but also that they may convey significantly different meanings, as largerscales are not the simple sum of a number of “small scales”. The city isnot just the sum of buildings and roads, the province is not just the sumof cities and infrastructures, etc. At different levels, interactions amongsystems and subsystems vary in quantity and quality, emerge in differentways, shaped and shaping social, cultural, economic and territorialprocesses.“Think globally and act locally” has become a sort of environmentalslogan; in the case of the risks such as those discussed here, the localscale is really crucial in avoiding larger disasters that may involve regionsfar away from the area directly hit by an extreme event or accident, andthe effects of which can last for longer than the few moments in which itdevelops. Acting local may mean sometimes avoiding extremely costlyconsequences for the settled communities but also for much widerregions (not to mention the fact that those effects are often trans-boundary across nations).As it can be seen in table 1, the different mitigation measures that can beproposed cannot all be implemented at every scale. They may achievebest results if adopted at the most convenient and appropriate scale,taking into account that coordination among regional, national and localis very often required.
3.2.2. Time factors
Plans prepared for urban areas or regions have a twofold connection totime: on the one hand, once devoted to development, a site will keephosting some kind of human settlement for a much longer time than anyindividual building or structure that will be built within it; on the otherhand, because of the difficulties in developing and approving such plans,especially now that participatory processes are almost the rule in EUcountries, their juridical validity will last for a rather long period ifcompared to the rapid onset of innovation and change characterisingtoday’s environment.
20
With respect to the second time-related factor, a comment should bemade with respect the so called “disaster phases”. Although there hasbeen some concern with respect to the exasperate use of such a logicalscheme (see Neal, 1994), pre-event, impact, emergency andreconstruction phases can be considered of some use to planners,especially when the question of plans’ validity is considered. In fact, ithas been already recognised by some authors (see in particular Boltonet al., 1986), that the possibility to actually enforce strict preventionrules varies with respect to the timing of the decisions taken. Before anextreme event, especially if rare, there is little concern about it: strictprevention will be difficult to pursue; during emergency andreconstruction, on the contrary, there will be a “window of opportunity”permitting braver decisions than in other times.
21
3.3. The importance of land ownership control policies in theprevention of natural risks
It is impossible to tackle the question of the relationship between land-useplanning and risk prevention without considering land ownership policies.Inthe history of modern town and regional planning, private property rightssubstantially hampered attempts to rationalise cities’ growth as well asachievement of equity in the distribution and access to services andamenities. Similarly, more or less legitimate forms of private control overnatural resources (including soil), have constituted until now one of themajor obstacles to sustainable development, by means of “external costs”transferred on to the whole society.While sustainable development and prevention, are general, commonlyagreed upon principles, practical tools to achieve them may result indamage to private or group interests.
In the present chapter, the central question of land property rights [f10]withrespect to prevention will be discussed in two sections:
- first the inherent contradiction arising from the need to guaranteesafety as a public good in a regime of private land property regimewill be discussed;
- second, different mechanisms of land rent control will be evaluatedwith respect to their efficacy in conducting to prevention.
3.3.1. Safety as a public good
It has been stated by different researchers that safety can be considered apublic good. «In the context of hazards, hazard mitigation is a classicexample of a public good maintenance problem» (Reddy, 2000).Safety shares with other public goods the two characteristics of non-rivalryand non-excludability among different actors: it is almost impossible tomeasure how much each individual benefits from safety provision. Economicanalysis has clearly shown how difficult it is to identify the real price ofpublic goods. In fact, in the absence of rivalry and excludability a marketwhere some individuals offer safety and others demand for it cannot takeplace. In any activity connected to the governance and management ofpublic goods, so-called ‘market failure’ occurs, requiring as a consequencethe intervention of the State as the only institution capable of taking care ofa common good, producing a benefit indistinctly to all society (Vogler,2000; Irer, 2005). However, despite of the fact that safety can be easilyrecognised as a public good, in the case of natural risks, associated withpotential catastrophies, a number of specific and distinctive features shouldnot be neglected.
22
First, the fact that natural hazards are not equally distributed on the Earth’ssurface, is different from other “public environmental goods” like air.Hazards affect some communities more than others, requiring publicintervention, subsidised by all taxpayers, that will nevertheless benefit alimited part of a national population. Furthermore, even in their spatialdistribution, hazards are not all the same: some cover rather wide areas(like floods or earthquakes), other are restricted to a very limited portion ofnational soil (landslides or avalanches). Clearly, in the absence of solidaritytools (like the Catnat insurance policy in France), willingness to pay toguarantee safety to small communities deciding to settle in dangerouszones is rather low. On the other hand, the fact that the state willguarantee safety in various forms, makes some people indulge in “freeriding” behaviour, taking advantages of public services without paying theprice for them.A second problem related to the provision of safety from natural hazardsdepends on the uncertainties associated with various levels of analysis andassessment of frequency, potential consequences and exact location. In thisregard, while paying for clean water and air brings a tangible advantage,protection from risks that are uncertain is far less appealing, especiallywhen one considers the difficulties in determining how much a givenpreventive measure has changed the harm potential. This is particularlytrue with respect to the so called non-structural measures, land-useplanning being one of the most prominent of the latter, that will manifesttheir beneficial contribution only after a fairly long time (e.g. longer thanthe “political life” of elected officers).Bobbit and Calabrese (1978) [f11]refer to those choices related to investmentin uncertain risk prevention subtracting resources to certain present needsas “tragic”, illustrating the variety of institutional strategies that have beeninvented by democratic societies to tackle them. Their final conclusion isthat “tragic choices” associated with risk situations cannot be avoided; whatcan be done instead is to make such choices transparent and to encourageparticipation amongst the largest number of subjects as possible.Reference to democracy is not ritual; one of the most prominent scholars inthe field of planning in risky areas, Platt (1999), has titled one of his recentbooks “Disasters and democracy”. Although he and his co-writers analysethe experience of the United States, most of their findings can be easilytransferred to Europe as well as to any country where private land propertyright is constitutionally recognised.The need to guarantee safety as a public good in such a regime leadsinevitably to the contradiction in which the state ends up subsidising riskybehaviours. The “welfare state” (but also the very liberalist US) subsidiserisks in many forms, ranging from reconstruction loans and funds to civilprotection provision in disaster areas.
23
«Disasters are part of a continuum of negative environmental impacts thatresult from unsustainable development practices. The effects of hazardagents are so pronounced because human settlements are based uponprinciples of short-term growth and profits for privileged segments of thepopulation instead of safety and sustainability for the society as a whole»(Tierney et al., 2001)This contradiction has been made explicit in the two famous verdicts of theSupreme Courts that substantially recognised restrictions to build inhazardous areas. Even though there are not to our knowledge similarEuropean cases that have been analysed in the disaster literature, theycertainly exist and to a limited extent have been reported (see Renard,2007).In those appeals, similar arguments recur, and these can be assigned totwo groups. One refers to the inherent uncertainties in risk analyses, whichapparently invalidate the recourse to “certain” limitation and infringementto legitimate expectations of gains. The second addresses the defects of theplanning system, sometimes limiting future developments in already built-up areas, including a number of public services. The latter group ofarguments supporting claims against building limitation brings thisdiscussion to the next section, related to the kind of instruments that shouldbe used by planners to achieve prevention.
3.3.2. Planning tools to achieve prevention
As proposed by Bolton et al. (1986), public investment in infrastructuresand facilities should attract private development towards safe areas insteadof what has been too often done in the past, locating hospitals, roads andschools in the vicinity of natural, as well as man-made, hazards.On the other hand, modern states must find ways to make binding toolscompatible with a private land ownership regime. The examination ofdifferent countries’ experiences within the ARMONIA project leads to theclear recognition of the large variety of mechanisms existing within the EUregarding land rent control systems, which are impossible to unify andrather difficult to “harmonise”.Nevertheless, three families can be identified.The first group of instruments is aimed at acquiring to public land reservoirsthose areas menaced by hazards in order to exclude them from futuredevelopment, restrict the advantages of further development (as it hasbeen done in the frame of the New South Wales floodplain managementstrategy, see New South Wales, 2001), [f12]and prepare the floor forimpeding future reconstruction in the aftermath of a disaster.The second group of instruments is aimed at transferring developmentrights away from areas still to be developed or already built-up areas. In
24
the latter case relocation applies not only rights but also to buildings andinfrastructures.Tools pertaining to the third group try to indirectly influence settlementchoices, acting on economic incentives, insurance policies and the like. Theidea is to use market mechanisms to influence private property decisions,making it more profitable to develop in safe, instead of risky, locations.It is not the goal of the present paper to propose what group of instrumentsis preferable or what mix of measures, neither it was among therequirements of the ARMONIA project. Instead, it seems useful to furtherunderline the importance of three issues related directly or indirectly toland-use planning.The first issue refers to the kind of prescriptions and recommendations forhazardous zones. Those cannot be limited to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option, that isgranting or denying building permits. A larger set of alternative optionsmust be provided by planners, according to the possibility of reducing risk,not only with respect to hazard levels in different land parcels, but alsoconsidering exposure and vulnerability of goods and people that will occupythem.When the only binding prescription, replicated in any circumstance, isbuilding limitation, the willing to infringe it becomes very high. Examples ofinfringements, legal as well as illegal, are rather uniformly distributed inEuropean countries, even in those that are best administrated. On the otherhand, building restriction is the only possibility when only hazard factors areprovided to planners, while vulnerability, exposure and risk scenarios arenot available to support decisions.A second issue refers to the willingness of people to accept limitations intheir region to reduce risk potential. This requires that they are well-informed regarding hazards menacing their community, perceive the risksas potentially harmful and decide to take preventative steps. Nevertheless,this argument does not fit those situations where developers are not part ofthe community, while building is deeply embedded in land property rights.«Investors reap the benefits of development while the hidden costs in theform of disaster losses are deferred, to be paid later by disaster victims andtaxpayers» (Tierney, p. 252).
4. The designed DSS to support planning decisions in risky areas
4.1. The methodological framework
The framework in figure 2 represents the skeleton of the DSS as resultingfrom several discussions among partners and a number of reconsiderationsand revisions.
25
«It was felt that the DSS to be developed should not just fit into currentplanning practice, but rather one which took forward the state-of-the-artand proposed a new best practice and more sophisticated approach totaking account of hazards, vulnerabilities and risks in land-use managementdecision-making.After discussion between partners it was decided that focusing just on thesite-specific development decision context was too restrictive. Instead itwas proposed and agreed that further development work should attempt toensure that the DSS:
• be designed for use in a wide range of decision contexts concernedwith the management of land uses rather than just with specificplanning decisions and should be able to investigate different optionsand scenarios for mitigation actions (relating both to land use andhazard measures);
• be designed for use in a flexible way with applications at regional andlocal levels;
• should make use of hazard, vulnerability and risk analyses includingan integrated analysis of risk across hazard types, if that provedpossible to implement.» (Walker, 2007, p. 12-13).
Figure 2. Conceptual framework of the Decision Support System
[f13]
land usesnatural/ rural urban
physical vulnerability- different types of agricoltural uses
- different types of soil uses
type of hazard- seismic (Se) - floods (Flo) - landslides (L)- volcanic (VO) - avalanches (A) -forest fires (F)
physical vulnerability- urban fabric - industrial/ commercial buildings- network infrastructures - strategic equipments
socio-economic coping capacity:- economic activities- age classes- trend of abandonment- recent disaster experience
urban coping capacity:- economic activities- network infrastructures- strategic equipmentssocial coping capcity:- age classes- handicapped
H. intensity
risk assessment (expected physical damage:
matrixes fragility curves
multirisk synthesis table:H, Vexp, R, CC, Na -tech
Chain Na-Na
land use preservation land use transformation
IncreasesHazard?
IncreasesVulnerability?
compatibility table and mapcriteria based on H,V,R, CC
land use acceptable
land use not acceptable
mitigation measures to reduce Hazard(s)
mitigation measures to reduce Vulnerability and Exposure
mitigation measures to increase coping capacity
reduces coping capacity?
future?as determined
in the plan
base
kno
wle
ge, c
ontin
uous
ass
essm
ent
regi
onal
or
loca
l pla
n
H.frequency H. location
land usesnatural/ rural urban
physical vulnerability- different types of agricoltural uses
- different types of soil uses
type of hazard- seismic (Se) - floods (Flo) - landslides (L)- volcanic (VO) - avalanches (A) -forest fires (F)
physical vulnerability- urban fabric - industrial/ commercial buildings- network infrastructures - strategic equipments
socio-economic coping capacity:- economic activities- age classes- trend of abandonment- recent disaster experience
urban coping capacity:- economic activities- network infrastructures- strategic equipmentssocial coping capcity:- age classes- handicapped
H. intensity
risk assessment (expected physical damage:
matrixes fragility curves
multirisk synthesis table:H, Vexp, R, CC, Na -tech
Chain Na-Na
land use preservation land use transformation
IncreasesHazard?
IncreasesVulnerability?
compatibility table and mapcriteria based on H,V,R, CC
land use acceptable
land use not acceptable
mitigation measures to reduce Hazard(s)
mitigation measures to reduce Vulnerability and Exposure
mitigation measures to increase coping capacity
reduces coping capacity?
future?as determined
in the plan
base
kno
wle
ge, c
ontin
uous
ass
essm
ent
regi
onal
or
loca
l pla
n
H.frequency H. location
26
«Key features of this outline of the DSS are:• the addition of the iterative loop around the diagram which indicates
the need to look at the situation under different conditions of land-use preservation or transformation before making decisions;
• the distinction between urban and rural/natural areas which wassuggested as necessary as those two conditions can correspond torather different juridical status that may be changed by plans andalso because the type of parameters to be considered, especially withrespect to exposed elements and vulnerabilities, can change betweenurban and rural environments;
• the addition of vulnerability and risk assessment within the structureof the DSS. In terms of vulnerability, there is a difference in theparameters used for physical vulnerability between different hazards.Conditions that make a building vulnerable with respect to floods donot necessarily coincide with those making it vulnerable toearthquakes or forest fires (see Wisner, 2004). Therefore, eventhough vulnerability is considered an intrinsic feature of the exposedsystem, the state of a system’s vulnerability is dependent upon andinfluenced, by the different characteristics of each hazard type;
• the inclusion of the more systemic form of vulnerability relating to anexposed community’s, ability or inability to respond and face a giventhreat through countermeasures and institutional as well as informalstructures. This notion of vulnerability is encapsulated by the term‘urban coping capacity’ in the diagram;
• the inclusion of a multi-risk synthesis table and map.This last element is particularly important and was conceived as the pointwhere all the main factors of hazards, vulnerabilities and enchained eventsare shown and laid down for possible comparison and evaluation. Such asynthetic table was seen as useful for those risks for which a satisfactoryrisk assessment procedure cannot be put in place according to the presentstate-of-the-art, but could be equally useful also in all the other cases. Infact it was argued that planners cannot ground their decision only upon riskestimates, they must be able to see if, and at what conditions, they caninfluence hazard and vulnerability factors, both in terms of physicalvulnerability and communities’ coping capacity.» (Walker, 2007, p. 14-15)The consequences of land-use change or preservation of risk factors mustpass through a sort of compatibility assessment, to decide if they may beconsidered acceptable, unacceptable, or some measures should be put inplace to mitigate hazards and/or vulnerabilities and or improve copingcapacity. Compatibility assessment and guidelines toward mitigationmeasures require the decision or at least the illustration of some criteriaupon which judge whether or not a given land use can be consideredacceptable or not. It is by no means an automatic outcome of the
27
“technical” analysis, though the criteria that may be thought of, are to acertain extent, dependent on the methodological path that has beencreated. It is not an automatic outcome because, for instance, it cannot betaken for granted that a good decision is to invest all resources on the morecritical cases or to solve the largest number of situations etc. The fewavailable experiences in this domain (for example that illustrated byGranger et al., 1999 for the Australian case) clearly show that there exist avariety of possible options and combination of policies, depending onavailable budgets and on goals to be met according to more general societalobjectives.
4.2. DSS structure and functionalityThe conceptualised model of the Multi-Risk Land Use Management SupportSystem (MURLUMSS) emerged from the discussion and refinement of theflow diagram discussed above.Continual adjustment over time, of sometimes fundamental design andfunctionality requirements, has resulted in a system which operates througha log-on followed by eight interdependent stages.The stages through which the DSS progresses are:a. Introduction/Logon procedureb. Map and Scenario selectionc. Hazard analysisd. Exposed elements analysise. Vulnerability assessmentf. Multiple Criteria Risk Evaluationg. Coping Capacity analysish. Outputsi. Output comparisons between scenariosSome of those stages will be described in further detail in the followingparagraphs.
4.3. Hazard analysis stage: parameters to assess hazards
Intensity scales (expressed as i.e. intensity, severity, magnitude) for eachsingle hazard have to be defined as parametric scales and strictly correlatedwith potential exposed elements and their vulnerability.
As general input for the development of the architectural design of theARMONIA DSS, intensity scales in reference to all considered hazards had tobe defined for the different scales (Regional strategic, local general, localdetailed).
28
At the regional scale it is possible, considering limits and constraints ofproduction of hazard maps, to adopt a simplified approach to produce a setof single hazard maps that can be examined together in a multi-layeredhazard map (not aggregating hazards) by simply overlapping the singlehazard maps using a GIS environment.This approach can be considered as appropriate also when no othervulnerability functions (empirical or theoretical) or damage matrices areavailable for risk analysis at local scales.The table of intensity scales, expressed as parametric values grouped intothree qualitative classes, is shown below. This approach can be used whendetailed intensity parameters are not available in hazard maps, at any scaleof analysis.
4.3.1. Simplified approach for regional scale
Table 2. Simplified approach for assessing intensities at the regional scale
The input parameters for defining intensity that can be adopted forvulnerability and risk analysis in the ARMONIA DSS, at regional/strategicscales (> 1:50,000) and local scales (< 1:50,000) are reported in thefollowing tables (Tables 3; 4).
INTENSITY SCALESNatural Hazard Low Medium High Parameters
Flood <0.25 0.2 - 1.25 >1.25 Flood depth (m)
Forest Fire < 350 350-1750 >1750-3500Predic ted F i re- l ineIntensity(*) (kW/m)
Forest Fire < 1.2 1.2-2.5 >2.5-3.5Approximate FlameLength (m)
Volcanos<5 5-10 >10
Intensi ty= VolcanicE x p l o s i v e I n d e xlog10(mass eruption rate,kg/s) + 3
Landslide(fast and slowmovements)
<5% 5 - 15% >15 %percentage of landslidesurface (m2, Km2, …) Vsstable surface;
Seismic< 10 %g 10 - 30 %g >30 %g
Peak ground horizontalAcceleration (%g)
29
NaturalHazard Scales of hazards param
eters
Flood
<10%(< 1 in 10 ys)
LOW
>10% - 1%(1 in 10 ys and
1 in 100 ys)MEDIUM
<1%(> 1 in 100 ys)
HIGH
Annual
probability
(%) offloodreturnperiod
(nointensi
tyassign
ed)Flood
<0.25 0.25 - 1.25 >1.25
Flooddepth(m)
(inundationlevel)
Flood
0 – 7 m
Flooddepth(m)
(inundationlevel)
ForestFire
< 350 350-1750 >1750-3500 >3500
Predicted
Fire-line
Intensity
(kW/m)
(Exceeding
agiven
probability)
ForestFire
< 1.2 1.2-2.5 >2.5-3.5 > 3.5
ApproximateFlameLength(m) (orKm?)
Pyroclastic
fall
<2,5 2,5-3 >3-10 10-30 >30
Loadon thegroun
d offall out(kPa)
Volcaniceruptions
Lavaflows
< 3.3 10-3 > 2m/s
Velocity, m/s
Landslide(fast and
slowmoveme
nts) <5% 5-15% >15%
% oflandsli
dearea(m2,Km2,
…) vs.totalarea
Seismicity
≤0,1 0,2-0,3 0,4-0,5
0,6-0,7
08-,0
1,1-1,3
1,4-1,6
1,7-
2,0
2,1-2,5
2,6-3,0
3,1-4,0
4,1-6,0 ≥6,1
Peakgroun
dacceleration(m/s2)in a
givenreturnperiod
Heavyrainfall
Rainfall mm
Extreme
rainfallin 1 -
24 h ina
givenreturnperiod
30
period
Tsunamihazard
1 Very low hazardAreas that have experienced tsunamis that resulted mainly
from gravitational landslides (terrestrial landslides)
3 Mediumhazard
Areas inproximity oftectonicallyactive zones
5 Very high hazardAreas in proximity of tectonically
active zones that have alreadyexperienced tsunami runups from
earthquakes, volcanoes and/orresulting (submarine) landslides
Susceptibleareas(km2)
ofcoastli
nepotenti
allyaffecte
d
Table 3. Intensity measures at the regional scale
31
4.3.2. Approach at the local scale
Parametricintensityvalues at local-strategic scale
Scales of hazards Parameters
Flood(dynamic flooding)
<0.5 0.5 – 0.75 >0.75 – 1.00 >1.00 – 1.25 > 1.25
HR = d x (v + 0.5)Where:HR is the floodhazard rating;d is the depth offlooding in meters(m);v is the velocity offloodwaters inmeters per second(m/s).
Flood(static flooding) 0 – 7 m. Flood depth (m)
(inundation level)Flood
(bank erosion) < 0.5 m 0.5 – 2.0 m > 2.0 m Extent of lateralerosion (m)
Forest Fire< 350 350-1750 >1750-3500 >3500
Predicted Fire-lineIntensity (kW/m)
(Exceeding a givenprobability)
Forest Fire < 1.2 1.2-2.5 >2.5-3.5 > 3.5 ApproximateFlame Length (m)
(or Km?)Pyroclasti
c fall <2,5 2,5-3 3 < e < 10 10-30 >30Load on the
ground of fall out(kPa)
Pyroclastic flows < 3 3 ≤ e ≤ 6 > 6
Magnitude(erupted
mass)/time (kg/s)
Volcanic
eruptions
Lavaflows < 3,3 * 10-3 3,3 * 10-3 ≤ e ≤ 2 > 2 Velocity (m/s)
< 500 500-5.000 >5,000 –50,000
>50,000 –250,000
>250,0001.000,000
>1,000,000–
5,000,000
>5,000,000
Volume (m3)Fell, 1994Slide
<1mm/yr
0.06m/yr
>0.06m/yr –
1.5m/yr
>1.5m/yr–
1.5m/month
>1.5m/month -
1.5m/day
>1.5m/day -
0.3m/min
>0.3m/min - 3m/s > 3 m/s
Velocity (Cruden &Varnes, 1996)
Rock fall ≤5 6 < e < 30 30 < e < 300 > 300 Energy of impact(Kj)
Debrisand earth
flow ----------------- D<1m and v<1m/sMEDIUM
D>1m and v>1m/sHIGH
D= thickness ofdebris front (m)V= flow velocity(flood or debris
flow) (m/s)Seismicity
≤0,1 0,2-0,3 0,4-0,5 0,6-0,7
0,8-1,0
1,1-1,3
1,4-1,6
1,7-2,0
2,1-2,5
2,6-3,0
3,1-4,0
4,1-6,0
>6,0
Peak groundacceleration,
modified from localresponse (m/s2) in
a given returnperiod
Heavy rainfallRainfall mm
Extreme rainfall in1 - 24 h in a given
return period
Snow avalanches
1 5 30 100 1000
Impact pressure(KPa)
(McClung andSchaerer, 1993)
Table 4. Intensity measures at the local scale
32
Other parameters that should be taken into account in the DSS, as they arerelevant to planning decisions, refer to hazard frequency and/or probabilityand location. Frequency is important because planners may wish to know ifthe threat is likely to occur every year, provoking damage in the exposedareas or if it is rather rare. If the expected damage is very large, rareevents should be also carefully addressed by planners, but is clear thatthere will barriers to the implementation of restrictions and limitations, forexample, to developers. People’s perception of hazards tends to fade sincethe last event: if the latter occurred decades ago their awareness of thehazard potential will not be as high as for recent disasters.Hazard location is not less important: although it is generally difficult toforecast what areas will be actually involved in a disaster, there are someclues in the hand of scientists to help them to recognise where such eventsmay occur with greater probability. Location is a key factor to identifyexposed, and therefore vulnerable, communities. At the local scale, definingthose areas where hazard intensity may be higher is even more importantas it permits differentiation within a given settlement or a city, promotingdifferent preventive measures.
4.4. Exposed elements and systems to be analysed
4.4.1. Exposed elements at regional scale
The identification of exposed elements and the definition of parameters andprocedures for vulnerability assessment have been carried out to beembedded into the DSS[f14]. The latter is aimed at providing a decisionsupport system for achieving land-use planning processes fully informedabout the risks affecting particular areas, the vulnerability of different landuses and populations (taking account of social factors such as age, genderand disability) and the options that are available to mitigate the risks. Thedecision support system has to be implemented within a GIS environment.Thus, first of all exposed elements have been articulated into threecategories, representative of the different types of spatial elements whichcan be handled by the GIS.Then, the identification of exposed elements has been carried out for eachconsidered hazard category. Common exposed elements at regional scalefor each type of spatial element can be synthesised as follows:
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Area-shaped exposed elements include population and the main land usesarticulated with respect to Corine land use map categories which representa common reference for all European countries. In detail, at a regional scalethe main environmental resources (including natural and anthropogenic)have been considered: urban fabrics, natural areas, agricultural areas.Lines include road networks and all the network services, which representrelevant exposed elements in case of hazardous events: urban communitiesare highly reliant on the so-called lifelines such as water supply, sewerage,power supply, etc. These elements are not included in Corine land covermap.Points include elements which can be represented as punctual elements at aregional scale, even though they sometimes have wide surfaces. In detail,they are the main relevant economic activities (industrial and commercialareas), the main historical assets and the strategic facilities in case ofhazardous events, such as emergency equipments and transport nodes.
4.4.2. Exposed elements at the local scale
Exposed elements categories do not change at the local level; what changesis the way they are considered and analysed, in that it is with a muchgreater level of detail. The census unit is still the smallest unit that one mayconsider to attach data related to population as well as buildingscharacteristics.It should be mentioned that in some circumstances, local administrationsmay be willing to initiate data surveys that are more detailed than thoseavailable nationally. In those cases, vulnerability analyses may prove moreefficient and also more reliable.
Type of spatial element Exposed Element
Areas Population
Areas - Urban fabric Buildings
Areas - Natural and agricultural areas Arable land and heterogeneous areas
Forest
Permanent crops
Lines Road networks
Other network services
Points Commercial areas
Monuments
Industrial centers (including hazardous installations)
Transport nodes (Airports, Railway stations,Harbors, etc.)
Emergency equipments (Hospitals, Firebrigades, etc…)
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4.5. Exposure and vulnerability assessment
4.5.1. Exposure and vulnerability assessment at a regional scale
Exposure of each element has been evaluated with respect to type, quantity(number or surface) and relevance (hierarchical level) of elements that maybe subject to a hazardous event.Vulnerability is a multi-dimensional concept which represents thepredisposition of exposed elements (people, buildings, infrastructures,activities, etc.) to be damaged in case of hazardous event.Hence, the concept of vulnerability expresses the capacity of a system toface an hazardous event, with respect to the main possible damage thatsuch an event could determine: direct damage, such as instantaneousphysical damage and consequent human suffering and indirect damage(human suffering, economic losses, etc.) due to incapacity of a system toface the event (e.g. inadequacy of road network which obstructs the rescueteam access).With respect to this, it was distinguished between:
- physical vulnerability, taking into account building vulnerability to eachhazard;
- human vulnerability, taking into account people with reducedmobility/escaping capabilities in case of emergency;
- coping capacity, taking into account the resources (in terms of quantityand hierarchical level of emergency equipment, such as hospitals, firebrigades, etc.; infrastructure and road network; accessibility from theexternal territory) enabling each municipality to face adverseconsequences of a hazardous event.
It has to be highlighted that physical vulnerability assessment has beencarried out only with respect to parameters and procedures alreadyavailable in international literature. In some cases, just exposure has beenconsidered at a regional scale.To conduct vulnerability assessments of areas, data have to be collectedand elaborated with regard to census units and aggregated with respect toeach land use within a municipality (fig. 1).Then, parameters and indexes are provided for physical vulnerabilityassessment of buildings and for human vulnerability assessment withrespect to each hazard.With regard to lines and points, at a regional scale only the location ofdifferent typology of lines and points is required. Then, for the elementslocated in hazard-prone areas, cards for physical vulnerability assessmentwill be provided. At present, these cards are available only for seismichazard and for some typologies of lines and points.These cards can be filled out at regional scale or it can be required thatdetailed analyses be carried out at local scale.
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Figure 3 - Data computing and aggregation layers for areal
spatial elements at regional scale
Finally, the last set of parameters concerns coping capacity assessment atregional scale. These parameters are aimed at evaluating the equipment (interms of strategic equipment such as hospitals, fire brigades, etc. and interms of road networks) of different regional areas (municipalities) forfacing the emergency phase due to a hazardous event and the accessibilityfrom external areas to each municipality.The lack of an aggregate index of vulnerability for areas, points and lines isdue to the choice of providing land-use planners with disaggregatedinformation related to the vulnerability of each exposed element as supportfor the definition of mitigation measures.
4.5.2. Exposure and vulnerability assessment at the local scale
Vulnerability assessment at the local scale should be, in general, morespecific and more accurate than regionally. While in the latter case what islooked for is a prioritisation strategy and the need to address some risk“hotspots” (see Van der Veen, 2005), locally it is important to differentiateas much as possible between different localities within the settlement or theurban area.Such a differentiation may help recognise built areas or social groups thatare more likely to suffer from damage in case of an extreme event.Regarding physical vulnerability it is important to address the followingsystems and elements:
- buildings; this can be dealt with either using an extensive survey or,more likely, through sampling techniques, recognising first classes ofbuildings with the same characteristics and then extending thevulnerability assessment from each sample to the entire class. This hasbeen done, for example, in the case of seismic risk;
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- public facilities, that will require, apart from a physical vulnerabilityassessment also the evaluation of their systemic vulnerability (or copingcapacity);
- productive buildings and areas;
- lifelines
With respect to coping capacity, apart from assessment related to criticalfacilities and infrastructures, some population data must be considered aswell, related to a variety of concerns; this can be better gathered locally,rather than regionally, and may count on ad hoc studies and surveys.The problem in dealing with such surveys is that one tends to automaticallyassociate vulnerability with some notion of poverty and marginality. Whilethis is certainly true in many cases, it should not be the exclusive way ofdealing with social coping capacity. As demonstrated by a number of otherstudies (Granger et al., 1999; Wisner et al, 2004), there are some otherparameters to be considered, for example the existence of good informationregarding risks and hazards, the accessibility to protection and selfprotection resources, to strategic facilities in case of an emergency, pastexperience providing insight on what may occur. With respect to planningactivities, inter-institutional cooperation and coordination are certainly keypoints in assuring that relevant information regarding hazards andvulnerabilities will be considered whenever a decision with spatial andterritorial relevance will be made.
4.6. Multiple criteria risk evaluation
Risk assessment should result from the combination of hazard andvulnerability of exposed systems. The two main methods that have beendeveloped so far to carry out such assessment will be illustrated usingexamples taken from seismic risk assessment.
4.6.1. Vulnerability curves
In the first assessment method, risk is first measured in terms of damageindex, by considering the hazard as a variable function (expressed in PGAwith given periods of return in given sites) and the vulnerability as acoefficient. The latter is obtained through more or less detailed surveyscarried out on buildings, either with a direct survey or through samplingtechniques. Vulnerability curves expressed in Figure 4, [f15]show how at thesame level of acceleration in a give site, a vulnerable building may becompletely destroyed (the upper curve) or suffer just minor damage (thefirst curve below).
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Figure 3. Vulnerability curves developed by Petrini et al., 1998
When statistical techniques are applied to a large number of buildings,vulnerability is evaluated according to a small number of simplifiedparameters, that may be easily fed by census data. In this case thevulnerability is not a coefficient but a statistical curve, to be combined withthe hazard distribution in order to get the final convolution representing therisk.[f16]
Once damage indexes are obtained, it is easy to extend them to allbuildings pertaining to the same vulnerability class.Vulnerability curves are rather appealing for the following reason:
- they make explicit the relationship between hazard, vulnerability anddamage;
- the correlation between damage and vulnerability is evaluated in largedatabase including a large number of cases surveyed after earthquakes.
The same method could be applied to some other elements, such asbridges, but in general it is difficult to extend to complex systems.There are no vulnerability curves available in the literature for other naturalor technological hazards.In order to get to a position where vulnerability curves may be developed,the following steps should be followed:
- simulations to study some stress factors on given elements of buildings(looking for the type of stress that floods, avalanches, different kinds oflandslide, etc. may have in terms of pressures, accelerations and forcesapplied to buildings). This kind of simulation can be done couplingcomputer techniques and real experiments in laboratories, as it has beendone in the field of seismic risk;
- damage on different components of buildings and structures should beaccurately surveyed after events, as it has been done in the case ofearthquakes, so that Italy, for example, may count on thousands of
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surveyed buildings, with a large majority of masonry buildings and asmaller percentage of concrete;
- whilst carrying out the steps mentioned in the previous points, firstvulnerability curves may be proposed and further adjusted whenevernew information and better knowledge become available.
4.6.2. Damage matrix approach
A damage matrix expresses in a matrix the combination of hazard levelsand vulnerability. Each xyj element corresponds to the damage provoked bythe y hazard level on the object classified in vulnerability class j.Damage matrixes are also constructed using statistical data, but, differentlyfrom the vulnerability curves approach, the correlation among factors is lesstransparent as well as the final results of the assessment.[f17] The matrixpartly permits removal of the uncertainties involved in associating givenlevels of vulnerability and hazard with the expected damage.Furthermore, while vulnerability curves derive from accurate analysis ofelements that make a given object more or less susceptible to damage, thematrix approach generally relies upon a very rough description of buildingor structure typology, including very few parameters.
Table 5: Example of seismic damage matrix for buildings
This is the reason why the matrix approach has been attempted for otherrisks than seismic, for which, as already largely discussed, vulnerabilityassessments are far behind and do not allow for rigorous identification offactors determining the structural response to a given type of stress.A sub-category of damage matrixes is a qualitative one, in which each xyjderives from a qualitative comparison between assessed hazard andvulnerability levels expressed both in terms of scores. Examples of this typeof matrixes proposed for natural risks other than seismic have beenproposed, for example, for landslides.
PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA PGA
0,1 g 0,2 g 0,3 g 0,4 g 0,5 g 0,6 g 0,7 g 0,8 g 0,9 g 1 g
RC1 RC2
RC3
RC1
RC2
RC3
RC1
RC2
RC3
Masonry builing with bricks well cemented; good connection between walls; heavy badly connected roof
3-4 floors
Masonry building with well cemented bricks, good connection between walls and roof
3-4 floors
Building type N. of floors Rupture condition
Stone building with iregular blocks, without connections among walls
1-2 floors
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Table 6: method developed by Pergalani and Petrini within a Regional project, here the matrix is
related to slide type (other matrices available for rock falls and debris flows)
4.7. Multiple criteria risk evaluation, also taking into account thecoping capacity of exposed systems
Criteria to decide compatibility of given land uses with respect to riskfactors should be considered in a broader spatial-temporal context. On oneside, it should be checked whether a given land use will create or transferrisk to another area or site: for this reason an evaluation across scalesshould be carried out to exclude the possibility that a solution which mayseem sound locally will not provoke substantial risk increase to other partsof the community. Similarly, decisions that may prove efficient at a largerscale, may prove prejudicial locally, imposing burden to a number oflocalities, for which at least compensation (if considered socially acceptable)must be guaranteed.Another important factor to be considered is related to the phase of thenatural feared event with respect to which decisions are made. As alreadymentioned in the aftermath of an event it is easier to make acceptablechoices that would not pass in “ordinary circumstances” such as, forexample relocation from the most dangerous areas.It is rather hard to find criteria in literature to compare and select riskprevention decisions in general terms, not to mention related to land-useplanning. The most commonly used criterion is cost benefit analysis, tobalance costs of mitigation against costs that will be sustained once adisaster occurs. While apparently simple, cost benefit analysis is fraughtwith problems deriving from the difficulties in translating social discomfort,victims as well as the benefits [f18]deriving from preventative actions intomonetary terms. There is a large literature, especially in the field ofenvironmental economics, focusing on the several limits of cost benefit
Type of landslide: slide
HAZARD depth > 1m depth > 1m depth > 1mDisplacement < 30 cm Displacement > 30 cm Displacement > 4 m
BUILDINGS VULNERABILITY
Position: above or below the landslide no damage no damage no damageIn the area potentially covered: noType of foundation: piles
Position: above, on or below the landslide partial damage collapseIn the area potentially covered: yesType of foundation: piles
Position: above, on or below the landslide partial damage partial damage collapseIn the area potentially covered: yesType of foundation: concrete bed
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analysis. Mechler (2003) shows that benefits associated with prevention arestrictly correlated to the discount rate applied to future damages, expectedas a consequence of some natural hazard, especially when the latter isconsidered rare.While according to common sense, it may be simple to prioritise on thebasis of the highest level of risk or on the basis of some rough cost-benefitestimation, in the attempt to maximise return of investment, one should bereminded of the multi-dimensional and articulate way of thinking whichcharacterises planners’ activity. As the Cairns example show (see Grangeret al., 1999), communities may prioritise on the ground of differentconsiderations, related to the number of people who will benefit from agiven action, to the affordability of associated costs, etc. To a certainextent, communities may also decide to take some risks, if compensatedaccordingly as it occurs in the case of nuclear waste disposal or similarnimby and lulu land uses.
Table 7: Framework to assess the compatibility between land uses and risks
There are a couple of concerns that are deemed particularly relevant to thefinal objective to be achieved by the ARMONIA project. Firstly, it isimportant that whatever criteria are chosen to assess the compatibility ofgiven land uses and mitigation efforts associated with them, they will bemade explicit and transparent to final users. One may not exclude the factthat other criteria than those proposed in the project will be considered bypublic administrations using the DSS; what is considered important is thatany criteria will be described and made explicit. It is after all a governanceissue that should be adapted to the cultural, social and institutional contextwithin which criteria are applied.Three sets of criteria are suggested here:
low H, V, R, high Coping capacity acceptable
transform transformation implies mitigation measures to be alternative exist compare mitigation costs withland uses increase in evaluated according to the costs associated to the
H following set of criteria: selection of an alternativeV * technically feasibleR * affordable no alternative acceptable as far as mitigationor reduces Coping Capacity * leverage effect exist measures are taken
* effectiveness: - multirisk or single risk not acceptable* socially acceptable referring to: - to residual risk and - equity concerns
low H, V, R, high Coping capacity acceptablepreserve land uses existing high levels of: mitigation measures to be preservation acceptable as far
H evaluated according to the as mitigation measures are takenV following set of criteria:R * technically feasible preservation is not acceptablelow Coping Capacity * affordable but mitigation is not affordable:
* leverage effect at least necessry to prepare a* effectiveness: plan ready when windows of - multirisk or single risk opportunity will open (after a * socially acceptable referring to: severe event for example) - to residual risk and - equity concerns
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− Technical feasibility: some mitigation measures simply may not beapplied to a given hazard or to a given area.
− Affordability: in this context affordability refers more to availableresources than to cost/benefit concerns. It is a matter of how resourcesare distributed among a number of concurrent needs, even whenassessment is restricted to risk prevention.
− Leverage has been proposed by Foster (1980) among other criteria toassess alternative mitigation criteria in general terms. Considering“leverage” as a criterion, Foster addresses the question: «will theapplication of the strategy lead to further risk reducing actions byothers»? This may be the case with what Bolton et al. (1986) proposedwith respect to the attracting effect of public investment in facilities andinfrastructures. If the latter are built in safer areas they will also attractprivate investment (residential as well as productive).
− Another important criterion refers to the number of risks (in case ofareas subject to multiple risks) that are addressed by the proposedmeasure. This is generally true for actions aimed at improving the copingcapacity of a given system: many times increasing community’s andsystems’ resilience proves its efficacy to a rather ample range ofhazards, natural as well as man made.
− Social acceptability: feasibility and affordability must be evaluated alsothrough the lens of society. On the one hand there is a matter ofacceptability: society accepts de facto some levels of risk, though thequestion is if it is always aware of this. On the other hand, there is amatter of equity, between those who take the risk and those who benefitfrom it as well as between those who pay for mitigation (not necessarilyin terms of money, but perhaps discomfort or need to abandon theirhouse, activity, etc.) and those who will benefit from it.
As it can be seen in the attached table 7, no decision can be madeautomatically; decisions require some level of evaluation and balancedifferent needs one against the other.Finally, to complete the methodological path, it would be necessary toconsider some control step, according to which, after a given period haspassed since the approval of the plan, tests and assessment are made toverify if and to what extent mitigation measures have been put in place andhow effective they have been in reducing one of the risk components or allof them.
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5. First applications of the DSS
Part of the Arno River basin has been used as the pilot area for testing thehazard, vulnerability and risk mapping methodology developed under theARMONIA project. The Arno River basin is located almost entirely within theTuscany region of central Italy. The Arno River Basin is subject to a numberof natural hazards including:
• Landslides;• Floods;• Earthquakes;• Forest fires.
5.1. Application at the regional scale
In detail, according to the skeleton of the DSS, the methodology has beenfirstly applied at a regional scale. The case-study area is composed of 21municipalities belonging to Florence, Arezzo and Prato Provinces in theTuscany Region of Italy. The area has been singled out based on severalcriteria, mainly with reference to the geo-morphological features, to theexisting hazard conditions and to the required data availability.
With respect to this area, the base-knowledge related to the currentconditions in terms of hazard, exposure, vulnerability and coping capacity
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have been set up. In detail, hazard maps available for the area have beencollected, exposed elements have been identified and vulnerability andcoping capacity have been measured, according to the parameters andprocedures set up in the DSS.
All the data have been collected and processed through a GIS. The testallowed us to validate the parameters included in the DSS, providing somefeedback for their improvement.
The test does not provide a synthetic risk assessment: according to themain target of the ARMONIA project, it has been mainly focused onproviding planners with synthetic tables where all the risk factors (hazards,exposure, vulnerabilities and enchained events) are shown for defining thecompatibility level of the different planning choices.
To this aim, some tables, related to different land uses (agricultural area,urban fabric) have been set up, showing the present conditions of hazard,vulnerability and coping capacity, evaluating if the Provincial CoordinationPlan of Florence forecasts increase or decrease these conditions, definingthe compatibility level of the planning choices with hazard, exposure andvulnerability features of each land use, providing some guidelines toplanners. Furthermore, a detailed table for coping capacity has been set up.This table is referenced to each municipality and not to each land use,because coping capacity analyses have been carried out referring to thewhole municipality. Thus, for each municipality the table provides plannerswith detailed information related to coping capacity, in order to verify ifplanning choices improve or decrease it, and with some guidelines forimproving current situation.
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5.2. Application at the local scale
At the local scale, vulnerability indices have been estimated for people,buildings and roads. The figures below show the socio-economicvulnerability indices for people estimated at a regional level for Tuscany andalso at a detailed level in the centre of the city of Florence.
Two different methods of classifying landslide hazard Example of a map combining vulnerability,and fllood hazard to give flood risk for theArno Riverexposure
Vulnerability of peopleto natural hazards in Tuscany
Vulnerability of peopleto natural hazards in Florence
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The vulnerability indices for people, buildings and roads have beencombined with hazard maps such as those shown for landslides below toproduce risk maps. As part of the research climate change scenarios havebeen developed for the Arno River basin as well a number of maps showingthe forest fire hazard.
6. Preliminary conclusions
As the project has not yet completely ended, it is not easy to draftpreliminary results. What will be done here is to underline what can beconsidered achievements of the project whilst highlighting areas thatdeserve further development in the next months and in future projects.The most important advancements have been thoroughly discussed in theillustration of the DSS structure and functionality. Those can be summarizedas follows:
a . inclusion of vulnerability, that has been recognised as a maincomponent of risk to be tackled by planners (see Veyret et al.,2000);
b. development of multiple scenarios for the same area to be comparedon the basis of their potential reduction/increase of risks;
c. consideration of multiple planning activities, ranging fromdevelopment of new areas to conservation and transformation ofalready built up environments.
In the context of those achievements, it should be emphasised thatparameters to assess the vulnerability to all the hazards included in theARMONIA project have been proposed and criteria according to whichground compatibility assessment of desired land uses have been developedas well.While the latter certainly constitute an interesting result of the project,particularly of the brain-storming resulting from the meetings amongpartners, it is clear that the solutions found cannot be consideredsatisfactory at all levels. In many cases vulnerability parameters lack therequired rigour, are not quantitative and not even semi-quantitative, whilstthey heavily rely on subjective judgement.Furthermore it would be necessary to explore in a more refined fashion thedifferences between the so called “coping capacity” and what may belabelled as “systemic vulnerability”. While the first refers also to social,institutional and organisational features, the latter address theinterdependency of territorial systems, which is particularly crucial indetermining accessibility to resources, infrastructures and public facilitiesand evaluate their intrinsic capacity to continue functioning despite somelevel of physical disruption.
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A last word on the purpose of the DSS that has been developed: it is a toolto guide planners through the most relevant component of risk assessment,to guarantee that crucial factors on which plans may have a stronginfluence are not neglected. Nevertheless it does not take into explicitaccount the sometimes diverging views stakeholders may have with respectto compatibility of types of development/transformation/conservationoptions.First applications of the DSS clearly show the advantages and thelimitations of such a tool. The first consist of the variety of alternativesolutions and mitigation recommendations/prescriptions that can be putforward once risk is evaluated according to a multi-criteria approach.Limitations concern the actual wish of governments and authorities to runthe entire system, feeding it with adequate data. Unless this is a strongobjective of the local/regional government, the methodological path will notbe followed or only to a very limited extent, favouring formal compliancerather than trying get from it the maximum information and suggestions forpreventative land use policies.
7. Bibliographical references
Bobbit P., Calabrese G., Tragic choices, Norton, New York, 1978.
Bolton P., Heikkala S., Green M.M., May P., Land-use planning forearthquake hazard mitigation: a handbook for planners, Special Publicationn.14. Boulder: Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado,Boulder, Colorado, 1986.
IReR, L’apporto della disciplina economica: la sicurezza come benepubblico, in the final report of the research funded by the LombardiaRegion, “Strumenti indiretti di prevenzione di natura economica” (Economictools to support preventive strategies), Authors: S. Menoni, G. Pesaro, M. DiDomenico, July 2005, unpublished.
Greiving S., Fleischhauer M, Wanczura S., Report of the WP 1, State of theart of spatial planning, Report on the European scenario of technologicaland scientific standards reached in spatial planning versus natural riskmanagement, March 2005.
Fleischhauer M, Greiving S., Wanczura S., Natural hazards and spatialplanning in Europe, Dortmunder Vertrieb für Bau- und Planungsliteratur,2006.
Foster H. D., Disaster Planning. The preservation of Life and Property,Springer-Verlag, New York, 1980.
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Granger K., Jones T., Leiba M., Scott G., Community Risk in Cairns. A Multi-hazard Risk Assessment, Commonwealth of Australia, 1999.
Gunderson and Holling, Panarchy. Understanding transformation in humanand natural systems, Island Press, 2002.
New South Wales Government, Floodplain Management Manual – themanagement of flood liable lands, NSW Government, Sidney, October 2001.
Platt R., Disasters and democracy. The politics of extreme natural events,Island Press, Washington D.C. and Covelo, California, 1999.
Reddy S., Examining hazard mitigation within the context of public goods, in„Environmental Management“, vol. 25:2, pp. 129-141.
Renard V., Partage des visions sur le thème „risques et urbanisme“.Approche économique de la réglementation en matière d’urbanisme,Proceedings of the conference „Colloque risques &urbanisme, 16th January2007, to be published in the journal „Environnement magazine“.
Veyret Y., Garry G., Meschinet de Richemond N., eds., Risques naturels etaménagement en Europe, Armand Colin, Paris, 2004.
Vogler J., The global commons. Environemntal and technologicalgovernance, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
Walker G., Deeming H., Report: Functional and technical architecturaldesign of a decision-support system for risk informed spatial planning, Del.5.2., June 2006.
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LAND USE PLANNING IN RISKYAREAS: FROM UNWISE TO WISEPRACTICES
CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
ARMONIA PROJECTContract n° 511208
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The ARMONIA approach for multi-hazard and multi-riskassessment applied to land use planningGiuseppe Delmonaco1, Claudio Margottini1, Daniele Spizzichino2
1 ENEA CR Casaccia/T6 Ecosystems s.r.l., Roma2 APAT/T6 Ecosystems s.r.l., Roma
Natural disasters represent the interaction between meteo-climaticand geophysical dynamics (physical system) with the human andinfrastructural systems. The growing impact of natural disasters inEurope is mainly due to increasing vulnerability of the territory,whereas Climate Change may also promote in a near future criticalconditions for increasing climate-related hazards such as e.g.floods, landslides, meteorological extreme events, coastal erosion.Therefore, there is an arising need to take into account properly, inland use planning and management, a multi-risk modeling andapproach based on a multiple hazard analysis, exposure andvulnerability assessment and risk estimation. This approach has tobe feasible and rigorous at the same time in order to be practicallybuilt up and applied by potential end users at various scales of landuse planning and management.According to the state of the art derived from the analysis ofEuropean and other international research projects and applicationson multi-hazard (MH) and multi-risk (MR) methods and outputs, arigorous, coherent and fully satisfactory procedure or method isstill lacking. Generally, most of approaches are simplified,qualitative and some fundamental parameters, such as exposureand vulnerability, are widely underestimated or totally disregarded.A first analysis of potential hazardous events vs. hazardmethodologies at various scales has been produced. The analysis ofmethods and legends suggests that hazard methodologies producebetter results at local and regional scales. At the same time, thereis not any consolidated definition about MH. This can be defined asrespectively (a) synthetic indicator of heuristic degree (i.e. high,medium, low) or simplified multi-layered summary map;(b) integrated indicator of damage/losses due to multiple naturalevents; (c) holistic approach;(d) domino effects.A coherent MH and MR analysis cannot be the simple combinationof hazard categories together, such as superimposing individualhazard maps and summing hazard degrees, as frequently found inresearch studies and practical applications. The feasible way may
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be combining together different risk estimates but only if acommon and meaningful risk metric which works between andacross multiple forms of risk can be identified.The Armonia MH and MR approach is mainly based in developingand envisaging vulnerability analysis as key element that linkstogether the natural event, in terms of type and dimension, withthe exposed elements, both structural and non structural.Vulnerability, as well as resilience can be defined as(1) physical;(2) human, social and functional;(3) economical;(4) identity-related issues.In practical terms, the main expected result in a harmonizedperspective of MH and MR analysis is the construction ofvulnerability functions, possibly related with fragility functions,having a different x axis for any natural event typology and acommon y axis. Therefore, it would be possible to define all the riskwith the same factor.The MR approach starts from rigorous single hazard mapsreport ing: site/area of potential natural event;intensity/severity/magnitude of the potentially disastrous eventthrough parametric scales; return time of events in terms offrequent/low intensity and maximum expected events. Vulnerabilityand risk should be evaluated possibly in a deterministic/parametricway or qualitatively in case of systemic and organisationalvulnerability. In any case, mapping exposure and vulnerability canbe considered as the minimum standard since complex or completemodels of vulnerability are actually inapplicable. Exposure andvulnerability levels have to be referred to each typology of hazardin relation with potential intensity of events, especially at localscale.After discussion with spatial planners, an important matter seemsto be a differentiation between inhabited/developed areas and notinhabited/developed sectors of the territory in terms of hazard/riskanalysis.The structure of Armonia approach is based on analysis of:
Not developed areas: potential development should take intoconsideration the actual hazards conditions by implementinga cost/benefit analysis capable to suggest the feasibility ofplanned projects according to the expected hazard and
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possible mitigation strategies to implement for reducinghazard and/or risk levels (land use planning);
Urbanised areas: the possible strategy to follow is mainlyaiming at mitigating exposure and/or vulnerability levelsthrough a cost/benefit analysis and investing in structuraland non structural preventive measures (land usemanagement).
In addition, the method will be updated by adding the step of theproduction of a multi-layered hazard map (not aggregated hazards)by the overlapping of the single hazards maps, using a GISenvironment. This kind of map will help spatial planners to detectareas where no hazard will likely occur as well as areas where twoor more types of natural events may occur.The main gap of the procedure remains the lack of fragility curvesderived by intensity/severity vs. typology of exposed element. Thedevelopment of such a functional links is out of the projectpurposes since this topic has been poorly developed in researchand also where implemented, such as in seismic analysis, resultscannot be generally adopted. This topic, at last, can be consideredas the most significant for future developments of multiple riskanalysis, especially at local scale.Finally, the most significant innovation and key issue of ARMONIAtheoretical and methodological approach, is the profoundintegration of planners, with distinct orientations and backgrounds,and NH specialists that generally produce a single hazard-orientedscenarios, that has produced a practical, but not simplistic toolcapable to help and support decision-makers, at various levels, torecognize the nature and severity of natural events that may occurin a specific area, define the impacts of natural events in terms ofexposed elements and vulnerability and provide answers tounderstand the feasibility of present land-use and future planningdecisions with geological and geophysical dynamics acting in thatarea.
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State of art with respect to land use planning as apreventive tool in EuropeStefan Greiving, University of Dortmund, Germany, contact:[email protected]
The state-of-art was analysed by means of eight reports, each of themfor one member state, structured along a harmonised commented tableof contents. Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain andU.K.were considered.The following aspects were identified:– similarities and differences between the analysis for each country,– strengths and weaknesses of the different planning systems and thepractices of dealing with natural hazards,– useful elements for the objective of harmonising spatial planning bestpractices and methodologies.Although at the beginning this state-of-art analysis was meant toconsider only spatialplanning, the role of other spatially relevant planning actors (sectoralplanning authorities) was taken into account. In this context, spatialplanning is defined as the comprehensive, coordinating spatially-orientedplanning at all spatial scales (national – local), while sectoral planningauthorities are in charge of single spatially relevant topics (e. g. watermanagement, geological survey, landscape, transport etc.).Land-use planning and management in general and in particular regionalplanning differs considerably between the different member states andeven within the states.Member States differ also as far as the regulatory regime is considered:- No regional planning at all or regional planning without any binding
effects (U.K., Poland, Greece, the Schéma régional d’aménagementet de développement du territoire (SRADT) in France),
- binding effects for the local (land-use planning) planning level (partlyItaly, Finland, Spain),
- binding effects for all planning authorities (sectoral planning at thesame or lower levels and land-use planning as in Germany),
- binding for everybody (public authorities and private persons, partlyItaly).
Despite of those differences in the normative side, similarities have beenrecognised in the general treatment of risk issues, which can besummarized as follows:
- Disaster driven process: The intensity of attention paid to naturalhazards typically depends on the experiences from recent events.
- Dominance of hazard assessment: The assessment side is dominatedby hazard assessment (and not risk assessment).
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- Lack of multi-hazard approaches: With a few positive exceptions amulti-risk approach is not used.
- Risk assessment mainly a task of sectoral planning divisions:Spatialplanning can be seen as one end-user of hazard and risk assessment.
- Such information is provided at two scales: regional and local.- Spatial planning plays only a minor role in risk
management:Supporting actor with the duty to implement measurescarried out by sectoral planning or other actors.
- Coordination is regarded as important: In most of the best practiceexamples special attention is paid to the coordination of the activitiesof all involved actors.
- Integrated risk assessment and management concepts are normallyrelated to a local area, because of the comprehensive competencesMunicipalities own. Only at the local level the same authority isnormally in charge of planning and management activities at thesame time, responsible for actions like long term mitigation (bymeans of land-use planning), preparedness and response (based onemergency response units, fire departments which belong to the localadministration) and finally recovery (funded from the local budget,organised for instance by local housing departments).
ARMONIA is based on the hypothesis of a lack of shared concepts andmethodologies to assess vulnerability. The results of the assessment ofspatial planning approaches in EU Member States have proven this fact.What are the reason?No attention is paid to vulnerability, because spatial planningpractitioners often do not see the need for vulnerability assessment andvulnerability maps. In consequence, planning practitioners just do notfocus on this parameter. An this might be ppropriate for several cases.However, vulnerability related information is indispensable in other cases,urbanised areas are seriously threatended. In consequence, a flexibletool is needed in order to be in line with the different needs of thedifferent actors involved considering the given risk. ARMONIA is based onthe hypothesis of a lack of shared concepts and methodologies to assessvulnerability.
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The MURLUMSS Multi Risk Decision Support System:Concept, Design and DevelopmentGordon Walker and Hugh Deeming, Department of Geography, LancasterEnvironment Centre, Lancaster University
The need for land use planners and managers to obtain an informed viewof the multiple hazards, risks and vulnerabilities which might be relevantto their planning and decision-making activities makes a decision supportsystem (DSS) a potentially valuable tool. Land use planning andmanagement requires the integration of complex ideas and largequantities of data and deals with interactions over a range of timeperiods. Decision support tools offer a powerful approach to dealing withsuch integration (Witlox 2005). Whilst various DSS have been developedfor applications related to hazard and risk management (Zerger 2002),very few of these attempt to deal with multiple hazards and risks andtypically provide a basic treatment of vulnerability parameters.In this paper we discuss the concept, development and design of a multi-risk decision support system (Walker et al 2006). The proposed MultiRisk Land Use Management Support System (MURLUMSS) DSSarchitecture has the following key features. First, it maps and visualisesinformation on up to 5 different natural hazards and risks as well asdifferent forms of vulnerability and coping capacity at both regional andlocal levels. These multi-scale, multi-risk and multi-vulnerabilitycharacteristics significantly extend current best practice on DSSdevelopment for hazard and land use management. Second, it enablesdifferent scenarios to be run which generate information about hazards,vulnerabilities and risks for specific areas of land that are of interest, sothat different options for mitigating risks, reducing vulnerabilities ordeveloping land can be compared. A simple multiple criteria analysis(Pramojanee et al, 2001) with weightings provided by the user is used toderive risk factors. Third, it enables scenarios to be run which comparehazards, risks and vulnerabilities under different modelled climate changeconditions. Fourth, it provides a knowledge base on hazards, risk andvulnerabilities and on the various approaches that can be taken tomitigate risks through land use management decisionsIn order to develop the functional and technical specification of the DSSis was necessary for development team to debate and resolve a numberof fundamental questions about the purpose, scope, scale, integrationand methodology of the DSS before the design work could be completed.The process of debate proved to be lengthy and time consuming. Thegreat variability of physical, social, cultural and political contexts acrossEurope was a major challenge in this respect. The development of theDSS was consequently highly iterative, with draft versions constructed,reviewed discussed and rethought. This is not surprising. The purpose of
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a DSS is to address poorly structured problems where tasks involved arenot fully defined. Therefore only an estimate of required functionality canbe made by users and developers. So the system is often an interactiveapproach to design, consisting of a number of design cycles and testingstages.The DSS is intended to act as a tool to be used as part of decision-making processes related to land use management. It can help ensurethat land use decisions are made on the basis of high quality andcomparative information about hazards, vulnerabilities and risks, but itcannot and is not intended to replace the actual decision-making whichhas to take place at regional and local levels. Such decision-making willalways need to be taken on an accountable and legitimised basis,involving political representatives and public participation as well asexpert decision-system inputs. The DSS would need to be adapted to beappropriate for the regional and local context in which it would be used(given the variation in physical, social, political and legal contexts acrossEurope) and for how it could fit within an overall decision-making processsuch as that required for Strategic Environmental Assessment (Greiving2004).In any decision making context there is an opportunity to use the DSSinteractively, and to consider GIS as part of a participatory approach todecision making. There is an extensive literature on participatory GIS(e.g. Cinderby 1999, Elwood 2002) which sees the technology of GIS as away of enabling both expert and non expert stakeholders to try outdifferent scenarios and futures and evaluate them through visualisation,comparison and discussion. MURLUMMS could be utilized in this way withan open participatory stakeholder process determining the scenarios tobe run through the DSS, the weighting factors to be applied in combiningvulnerability indices and the comparative interpretation of the risk factorsfor different scenarios.
References
Cinderby, S. (1999) GIS for participation: the future of environmentalGIS?, International Journal of Environment and Pollution, vol 11, 3, pp304-315
Elwood, S. A. (2002) GIS use in community planning: amultidimensional analysis of empowerment, Environment and Planning A,34, pp 905-922
Greiving, S. (2004) Risk assessment and management as anImportant Tool for the EU Strategic Environmental Assessment. DISP 157(2004), pp. 11 - 7.
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Pramojanee, P., Tanavud, C., Yongachalermchai, C. andNavanugraha, C., 2001. “An application of GIS for mapping of floodhazard and risk area in Nakorn Sri Thammarat Province, South ofThailand.” http:///www.itc.nl/ha2/suslup/Thema5/198/198.pdf.
Walker G P, Deeming H and Arnot C (2006) Functional and technicaldesign of a decision-support system for risk informed spatial planning,Deliverable 5.2, ARMONIA, www.armoniaproject.net
Witlox, F. (2005) Expert systems in land use planning: An overview.Expert Systems with Applications. 29:437-445.
Zerger, A. (2002) Examining GIS decision utility for natural hazardrisk modelling Environmental Modelling & Software 17 287-294
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Risk analysis supporting land use planning at regional scale:the case of the Mugello area.Adriana Galderisi, Dipartimento di Pianificazione e Scienza del Territorio,Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, contact: [email protected]
The Workpackage 6 “Case Study and quality control” of the ArmoniaProject has been aimed at testing, on a selected area, the methodologicalframework set up in WP5 for hazard, exposure and vulnerabilityassessment to support and drive land use planning at different scales.
This represented a relevant step within the overall project, providing avalidation of the research path, built up during two years facing manyquestions, trying to “harmonise” different expertises but, mainly,different points of view about hazard and risk analyses and their “role”within the land use planning and management processes.
The methodological framework has been first of all applied at regionalscale. The case-study area is composed by 21 municipalities belonging toFlorence, Arezzo and Prato Provinces in Tuscany Region. The area hasbeen singled out basing on several criteria, mainly referred to the geo-morphological features, to the existing hazard conditions and, even, tothe required data availability.
With respect to this area, the base-knowledge related to the currentconditions in terms of hazard, exposure and vulnerability have been setup. In detail, hazard maps available for the area have been collected,exposed elements have been identified and vulnerability has beenmeasured, according to the parameters and procedures set up in WP5.
All the data have been collected and processed through a GIS. The testallowed us to validate the parameters suggested in WP5, providing somefeedbacks for their improvement. The relevance of the validation ismainly due to the fact that just few of the parameters and procedures forvulnerability assessment were already available in literature and largelytested in past experiences, such as the case of buildings vulnerability toseismic risk (Meroni et. al., 2000). Most of them have been drawn frompioneering work (Granger et. al, 1999) or even proposed for the first timein the ARMONIA project.Besides, it should be underlined that the work grounds on acomprehensive approach to the concept of vulnerability (Wisner, 2001;Villagràn de Leon, 2006), including, even though basing on simplifiedparameters and procedures, building vulnerability, people vulnerabilityand, even, the features of a territorial system enabling it to cope with theevent, mainly during the emergency face (coping capacity).Taking into account different aspects of vulnerability, the proposedprocedure allowed us to provide disaggregated information useful for land
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use planning and management, but it increased the difficulty to find out asynthetic risk assessment in terms of expected damages. Thus the test,according to the main target of the Armonia project, has been mainlyaddressed to provide planners with synthetic tables where all risk factors(hazards, exposure, building and people vulnerability, coping capacityand enchained events) are shown, contributing to define the compatibilityof the different planning choices.
To this aim, some tables, related to different land uses (agricultural area,urban fabric) have been set up, showing the present conditions ofhazard, vulnerability and coping capacity, evaluating if the ProvincialCoordination Plan of Florence forecasts increase or decrease theseconditions, defining the compatibility level of the planning choices with allthe different risk factors, providing planners with appropriate guidelines.Furthermore, a detailed table for coping capacity has been set up. Thistable is referred to each municipality and not to land uses, as copingcapacity analyses have been carried out referring to the wholemunicipality. Thus, for each municipality the table provides planners withdetailed information related to coping capacity, in order to verify ifplanning choices improve or decrease it, and with some guidelines forimproving current situation.
In conclusion, the work carried out within WP6 seems to validate theproposed methodological framework showing, mainly, its relevance tosupport land use planning through guidelines both to reduce future risksin new settlements and to mitigate current risk conditions in existingones. Furthermore, the test has shown that the proposed parameters andprocedures can be easily applied and managed by the multi-risk decisionsupport system (DSS) as designed in WP5.
1 Bibliographical references
Granger K., Jones T., Leiba M., Scott G. (1999) “Community Risk inCairns. A Multi-hazard Risk Assessment”, Commonwealth of Australia.
Meroni F., Petrini V., Zonno G. (2000), “Distribuzione nazionale dellavulnerabilità media comunale”, in Bernardini A. (eds), La vulnerabilitàdegli edifici: valutazione a scala nazionale della vulnerabilità sismicadegli edifici ordinari, CNR – GNDT, Roma.
Villagràn De Leon, J.C. (2006), “Vulnerabilità, a conceptual andmethodological review”.
Wisner B., (2001). “Vulnerability in Disaster Theory and Practice: FromSoup to Taxonomy, then to Analysis and finally Tool”. InternationalWork-Conference Disaster Studies, Wageningen University andResearch Centre; http://faculty.kssp.upd.edu.ph/geog/gaillard_jean-christophe/syllabi/geog255/Wisner_Vuln_Concept.pdf
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The application of the Armonia multi-hazard and multi-riskmapping methodology at a local, regional and national scaleDarren Lumbroso, George Woolhouse, HR Wallingford, UK, contact:[email protected]
Part of the Arno River basin has been used as the pilot area for testingthe hazard, vulnerability and risk mapping methodology developed underthe ARMONIA project. The Arno River basin is located almost entirelywithin the Tuscany region of central Italy. The Arno River Basin issubject to a number of natural hazards including:
• Landslides;• Floods;• Earthquakes;• Forest fires.
Vulnerability indices have been estimated for people, buildings and roads.The figures below show the socio-economic vulnerability indices forpeople estimated at a regional level for Tuscany and also at a detailedlevel in the centre of the city of Florence.The vulnerability indices for people, buildings and roads have beencombined with hazard maps such as those shown for landslides below toproduce risk maps. As part of the research climate change scenarioshave been developed for the Arno River basin as well a number of mapsshowing the forest fire hazard.The methodology that has been developed under the ARMONIA projecthas also been implemented at a national scale in England and Wales.Thjsi has allowed the vulnerability indices developed by the ARMONIAproject to be compared with those developed by organisationsresponsible for managing natural hazards in the UK.
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Integration of climate change in the ARMONIA methodologyDr. Juergen Kropp , Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research ,Dept. Integrated Systems Analysis, Potsdam, Germany , contact:[email protected]
Following the publishing of the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC onfuture climate change a foresighted planning will become more than everan issue for local planners and decision makers. In particular for riskprone areas changes in the water availability, increasing temperature,and sea-level rise may have a tremendous impacts on human livelihood.Focussing on these threats from the planner's perspective their demandfor concrete measures is coherent. But is this demand adequate and arethese measures necessary for future planning?Answering the first part of question one have to consider the basis ofclimate prognoses. Since climate is a 30yr average of weather andweather itself is only predictable for a limited horizon, also forecasts ofclimate have inherent (spatial and temporal) limitations, which can berelated to the following sources:1. System based uncertainties, e.g. - huge amount of system parts2. Scenario related uncertainty, e.g. - demographic uncertainties - economic uncertainties - convergence related uncertainties3. Model based uncertainty, e.g. - different representation of physical processes - different horizontal/vertical resolutionTherefore the endevour of climate change is not only how we can copewith adeverse effects, but also how we can provide policy relevantknowledge without having exact quantitative numbers, as e.g. probabilitymeasures (cf. Schellnhuber & Kropp 1998, Kropp & Scheffran 2007).Concerning "planning" as adapation to changing environmentalconstraints it must be clear that this was already an ongoing duty ofhumankind during the last milleniums. The only difference is that we canact proactive today.Focussing, for instance, on concrete whether related disasters (extremeevents), which are of vital interest of decision makers, it becomesinstantaneously clear that serious consequences are often a result ofunsuitable interactions of man and nature. For example, due to economicinterests low-lying lands often used as building lands although it faces aconsiderable risk of flooding. Thus climate impact assessment - andtherefore planning - cannot only located in the natural sphere, but mustsituated in the realm of socioeconomics as well.
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Here vulnerability comes into play. Vulnerability, defined as a function ofa sensitivity of a concrete exposed unit (e.g. buildings, forests, or humanhealth) against specific climate impacts (heavy rain, floodings, heatwaves, etc.) and the societies' capability to cope with the consequences(adaptive capacity), is an innovative concept, since it allows to build abridge between impacts (hot spots) and necessary action (adaptation)(cf. Kropp et al. 2006).Thus, with respect to planning issues the question must be how tominimize risks (economic, social, natural) for the future. Since it isdifficult to deduce information about e.g. future intensity and frequencyof storms, the precautionary principle in combination with an applicationof new technologies for empirical data assessment should be the futureconcept in planning (cf. Kallache et al. 2005, Rust et al. 2007, IPCC2001). The information provided by climate change scenarios are explicitenough to implement this. But a parallel examination of empiricalmeasures is necessary. Thus, for any action we have to answer thefollowing questions in advance:What kind of environment/city do we have (systematic stocktaking, i.e.vulnerability assessment)What are possible/likely coevolutions of the man-environment systems?(scenario assumptions)What kind of environment/city do we want? (normative decisionsneeded, willingness to pay)What must we do to get there? (planning)We will discuss these issues for the case study region of the ARMONIAproject (Arno catchment/Tuscany, Italy) and will make clear that aparadigm shift is nessary among planners faciing the threats of climatechange. Decision makers often disavow that parts of their planningtargets also rely on uncertain information, cf. e.g. economicdevelopment. Given the complexity of man-environment interactionpolicy must learn that we have to do with weak and soft prognoses only.But this is much more than to know nothing.
References:Kallache M, Rust H & Kropp J.P. (2005): Trend Assessment: Applicationsfor Hydrology and Climate Research. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics.12: 201-210Kropp J.P., Block A., Reusswig F., Zickfeld K & Schellnhuber HJ (2006):Semiquantitative Assessment of Regional Climate Vulnerability: TheNorth Rhine - Westphalia Study. Climatic Change. 76(3-4): 265-290Kropp J.P. & Scheffran J. (Eds.) (2007): Advanced Methods for DecisionMaking and Risk Management in Sustainability Science. Nova SciencePubl., New York, 325pp.(ISBN 1-60021-427-4)
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Rust H., Kallache M., Schellnhuber HJ, Kropp J.P. (2007): ConfidenceIntervals for Flood Quantile Estimation using a Bootstrap Approach.Advances in Water Resources, accepted.Schellnhuber H.-J. & Kropp J.P. (1998): Geocybernetics: Controlling acomplex dynamical system under uncertainty. Naturwissenschaften 85(9): 411 – 425
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Some critical aspects in assessing hazards for land useplanning purposesFloriana Pergalani, Politecnico di Milano, Italy; contact:[email protected]
One of the critical aspects in assessing hazards for land use planning isthe presence, in a territory, of different types of hazards, for examplenatural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, floods, etc.and artificial hazards such as chemical, technological, etc.Analysis of the multi-hazard methods performed suggested that multi-hazard assessment is not the correct way to proceed in areas exposed tomultiple threats. In fact it is hard to find common units of measures(qualitative or quantitative), the same detail of the results, the sameworking scale and so on.The way to tackle the question could be to move from a multi-hazard to amulti-risk assessment, using the same unit of measures of the resultssuch as the estimation of the economic damage or human lossesresulting from the combination of the vulnerability and exposure todifferent hazards. In this way planners will be able to compare expecteddamage and secondary and indirect consequences triggered by hazardsand to compare the expenses needed to prevent this risk. Furthermore,they will be able to decide and individuate the priority.In the case of multi-risk, however, an other critical aspect can be risen:most of the research and tools developed address mainly the hazardfactor, while exposure and vulnerability analyses are still at a verypioneering and experimental phase. The most remarkable exception isconstituted by seismic risk, as in this field there is a long tradition ofmethods aimed at assessing the vulnerability of buildings and to a minorextent that of other urban systems (like strategic facilities andinfrastructures) and at estimating the damage as the combination ofhazard and vulnerability.Another critical aspect regards the level of communication between theplanners and the specialists, in fact often on the one hand plannersunderstand too little about risks, in the sense that they ignore manytechnical components that are central to well informed decisions; on theother hand, specialists in various fields have failed to produce results in aform that could be useful to planners. Obviously the problem can beovercome only through an effective multidisciplinary work.Some critical aspects are, also, present considering each hazard, forexample in the case of the seismic hazard. The seismic hazard is due tothe combination between standard hazard and local hazard: the standardhazard is defined as the expected shaking in a site and it is due to theseismogenetic characteristics and the propagation of the seismic wavesfrom the source to the site, considering standard geologic condition; the
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local hazard is due to the modification of the standard hazard due toparticular geologic and geomorphologic conditions, that can produce theamplification effects related to the presence of valleys with loosedeposits, edges, ridges and cliffs, or instability effects as landslides,densifications and settlements.Standard hazard can be assessed considering a probabilistic or adeterministic approach. The first approach considers the probability thatin a specific site and in a predefined time-window a certain hazardseverity may be reached. It permits to obtain foresights about futureevents in a given area, estimating the probability of having an eventstronger than an established severity in a given time period, making useof probabilistic analysis of past events and of the available knowledgeregarding existing faults and other seismogenetic parameters. The resultis a distribution function in the site and the determination of possiblehazard indicators. In the deterministic approach an individual event andits propagation in the surrounding areas (hazard scenario) is selected. Inthis case, a level of ground motion in a given area must be determined.Different data sets are considered to investigate how the phenomenapropagates far from the epicentre according to attenuation laws,providing as a result the variation of severity at given distances from theepicenter.To do that, knowledge of structural geology and historical seismic datamust be used. In Italy the following basic data are available:Historical recorded events catalogue. For every recorded event it ispossible to find out information including the indicators of epicentralseverity: epicentral intensity and magnitude.Source zones. Those are areas that can be considered geologically,structurally and kinematically homogenous. A seismic zone is definedthrough the probabilistic distribution of epicentral intensities.Attenuation model. For assessing the hazard it is necessary to know,beside the localization and the epicentral severity, how the phenomenonpropagates from the epicentre and how correlated severity parameterschange accordingly. Once the standard hazard is estimated in each location, anotherimportant step must be fulfilled in order to consider local hazard.The local hazard can modify, even substantially, the standard hazard:particular geological and morphological conditions characterizing aspecific area (i. e. morphological irregularity, deposits, landslides, etc.)may amplify the ground motion. For areas prone to produce local effects(and then potentially dangerous) soil response to different shock levelsmust be investigated.The local hazard can be distinguished in:- instability effects: collapses or movement of soil or rock blocks that
can be triggered by the seismic input;
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- amplification effects: represented by the interaction of seismic waveswith particular local condition, such as surface and buriedmorphologies, particular geological and stratigraphic soilcharacteristics that can modify the characteristics of surface seismicresponse compared with the shaking in the bedrock.
Different levels of widening can be used: qualitative, semi-quantitativeand quantitative approach. For the qualitative approach the knowledge ofthe geologic map, geomorphologic map, litho-technical map and geologiccross-sections are necessary to obtain the map of qualitative localeffects. For the semi-quantitative approach the parameters indicating theamplification and the instability factors are pointed out using table andcurves and some geotechnical parameters. For the quantitative approachboth numerical analysis or experimental analysis can be performed tohave as a results the modified expected seismic inputs, in the case ofamplification phenomena. In the case of instability phenomena, twoapproaches can be used: regional scale and detailed scale. For bothcases, the values of the instability parameters and the displacements areobtained, depending on the level of widening.Consequently, due to the critical aspects above mentioned, it is possibleto investigate seismic hazard on different levels of study, on the basis ofseveral factors as:- the level of investigation to carry out;- the sort of data available;- the cost to support for the research and for the implementation of
the project;- the local hazard situation (more or less serious) to investigate.Obviously the levels of study depend also on different objective fixed inadvance.The choice of the scale is conditioned by multifaceted factors. Out of allthese the most influential are:- the depth level chosen to lead the analysis;- the object of the study (infrastructure network, building, landslide,
etc.);- the sort of approach to use (preliminary study, cognitive survey,
detailed survey, etc.).In particular, the national scale is useful to classify the national territoryin different level of seismic areas; for this reason the standard hazardshould be obtained at this scale, using a unique data base and a uniquemethodology, to have the same level of safety.The regional one is useful to perform rules or methodology to identify andquantify the areas affected by local hazard and to classify the territoryrespect to the priority.
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The local scale is the most detailed one and it is used to zoning the areasin study or to give indications about the buildings protection levels toadopt.
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Some critical aspects in assessing vulnerability for land useplanning purposesSilvia Cozzi, Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione, Politecnico diMilano, contact: [email protected]
The presence of one or more hazards insisting on a territory is a problemthat has to be dealt using appropriate sets of analysis and instruments.These systems have to support land use planning decisions and actions,and be useful to act in a sustainable way both for the short period (forcrisis management) and the long period.In order to put into practice instruments like these it is crucial to knowand study not only the hazard (or hazards) per se, but also the othercomponents of risk, that are the exposure and the vulnerability of theelements located in the affected area.The European ARMONIA Project took into account all those aspects insidethe work packages (WPs) in which it has been structured in. Through thestudy of all the above mentioned elements, it has been possible to createand then apply a Decision Support System (DSS), a particular instrumentuseful to address planning decision at the local and regional scale.Among the more critical aspects to define, study and analyse during theproject period, one of the most debated has been the vulnerability. Itdefines how much is an object prone to be damaged in case ofoccurrence of an hazardous event. So, it is a measure of susceptibility,fragility, weakness, and it constitutes a qualification of exposed elementsand systems. In fact, the concept of vulnerability is closely linked to thatof “exposure”, indicating the number of exposed people and the quantityand value of threatened goods. There is a risk only if there are objectsthat may be damaged or people who may be involved in the area wherethe event occurs. It is then important to analyse the area and verifywhich and how many kinds of objects and people are exposed. Secondlyit is important to assess how vulnerable they are.The difficulties in including vulnerability aspects in the analysis for theDSS are many. First, the difficulties in identifying the parameters to beincluded in the system, that has to be a general ad adaptable instrumentand, so, it has to be flexible to very dissimilar situations. In fact (and it isalso a second reason), the spatial planning experiences of the involvedEuropean countries, collected and reported in the first part of the project,show a rather diversified picture.The WP1 provides a general perspective of the European way to tacklesrisk prevention and management in planning. It has underlined somecriticalities as well as positive aspects that should be taken into accountin designing a DSS for planning decisions.First, it must be recognized that European countries provide a ratherample spectrum of what is intended in terms of land-use and spatial
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planning and management. In some countries (like Italy or Spain forexample), land-use planning is dealt with by professionals with anarchitectural/design background, which leads them to consider urbanplanning and design as part of a unique approach.In other countries (like the UK for example), planners are educated alsoin law, sociological and political science schools, so that their vision ofplanning is much more oriented toward strategic programs of regionaland urban development.All those differences, lead to the conclusion that any attempt toharmonise the prevention-oriented methods into land-use planningdecisions must be flexible enough to get used to various kinds of politicaland land management systems. It means that the DSS must be amethodological instrument, useful to guide planners through the stepsthat are considered very important both to value the implication ofexisting hazards and vulnerabilities, and to decide development orconservation policies and plans. So, it has to be able to include bothaspects, with respect to future development as well as to thepreservation of urban areas and functions. Of course, the need to developvulnerability assessment tools become even more evident when alreadyexisting parts of the town must be considered. (Armonia Project, del.5.1).One more reason of the difficulties in assessing vulnerability, as it hasbeen specify in the WP5 deliverable, is because of most of the researchand tools developed until now address mainly the hazard factor, whileexposure and vulnerability analyses are still at a very pioneering andexperimental phase. This constitutes a rather important limitation to theProject, as it cannot count on a vulnerability assessment method alreadyagreed upon by the scientific community. Yet, vulnerability analyses havebeen recognized as crucial for planners.Besides, it must be considered that the decisions and the ways to workon are different if they are taking into account the local or the regionalscale. For this reason the DSS has been developed in both the scales.This is important also because each territory has its own peculiarities andit can be exposed to particular types oh hazards and also, it can besubject to specific land use planning rules.All these aspects have to be taken into account when land use planningdecisions are acting on a risk-exposed area, either at the local or at theregional level. Every kind of decision and action can’t then avoid to beconnected to a conscientious analysis of the vulnerable elements to oneor more hazards insisting on a specific territory. No project aimed atreducing people’s vulnerability can succeed, no matter how wellconceived, without the people it is designed for. (Wisner et al., 2004).
References:
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ARMONIA Project Parteners*, Natural Hazards and Spatial Planning inEurope, Edited by Mark Fleischhauer, Sefan Greving, Sylvia Wanczura,(June 2006) (* Silvia Cozzi, Miranda Dandoulaki, Helen Fay, MarkFleischhauer, Adriana Galderisi, Sefan Greving, Jaana Jarva, SciraMenoni, Jorge Oleina Cantos, Kalliopi Sapountzaki, Heidi Virkki, SylviaWanczura ).ARMONIA Project, Contract n° 511208, WP5: Integration of harmonizedrisk maps with spatial planning decision processes, Del. 5.1: Harmonisedhazard, vulnerability and risk assessment methods informing mitigationstrategies addressing land-use planning and management, 2006Menoni, S., Costruire la prevenzione. Strategie di riduzione e mitigazionedei rischi territoriali, Pitagora Editrice, Bologna, 2005.Wisner B., Blaikie P., Cannon T., Davis I., At risk. Natural hazards,people’s vulnerability and disasters, Second edition, Routledge, 2004.
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Approaches to Seismic Mitigation Planning and the Case ofIstanbulMurat Balamir, Prof. Dr. METU, Ankara.
Main topics that will be discussed in the conference
‘Mitigation’ in disaster policies has become a central area of concern inthe international community during the past decade, and in many of thenational administrations. Countries are now reshaping their legal andorganizational structures related to disaster management, incorporatingmitigation objectives. In this context, assessment of urban risks causedby natural and technological hazards, and the need to devise methods forcoping them are currently imposing new tasks to the institution of urbanplanning. Several types of planning provide services in dealing with thedifferent aspects of disasters: post-disaster (reconstruction) planning,planning for emergency preparation (contingency) planning, mitigationplanning, and resilience planning. Mitigation planning which can beexercised at national, regional, and local levels, presents a challengingand rich new area of theoretical research and professional practice at thecity-level. Current approaches to city-level mitigation planning howeverare also varied. Apart from imitations of engineering methods valid forindividual buildings only, system modelling and DSS techniques prevail. Acomprehensive urban mitigation planning approach was recommended inthe case of Istanbul metropolitan area, specifying a set of ‘risk sectors’each with identified stake-holders to participate the process. Each sectordemands spatial analyses in its own, besides organizational, financial,and social measures. High-risk areas demand participatory immediateaction planning based on local partnerships. Two forms of mainstreamingmitigation planning are conceivable. For the introduction of a newlyexplored practice, ‘encouragement mechanisms’ are more appropriatethan devising strict ‘obligatory routines’.
Focus on land use and spatial planningMitigation efforts have significant implications for urban and spatialplanning in terms of ‘input information’, new ‘tools of analyses’, and needfor extra ‘powers of enforcement’. Not only partial decision tools, but it isan imperative to develop a comprehensive ‘method of mitigationplanning’ at city-level. Thirdly, the total ‘institutional framework’ andregulatory system demands a new design. This has to begin with formaldetermination of hazards information accessible to citizens, and (oftenconstitutional) obligations for the public reduction of risks in varioussectors in settlements. Obligations of mitigation plan preparation for localauthorities must (with criteria of priorities) be regulated. In settlementswith lower risks this could rest on local discretion. Local practice of
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mitigation should take into consideration all hazards, identify risk sectors,and develop participatory methods of decision-making. In high-riskareas, extra powers of enforcement may comprise procedures to relocateuses, reduce densities, TDR, action planning for comprehensive localtransformation and redevelopment, building retrofitting, reorganization ofproperty units (and unauthorized stock), and in particular ‘Vacate andTransfer’, ‘Redevelopment in situ’ models of local organization of rights inproperty redevelopment.
Conclusion and other remarksSettlements should by definition have a hazard survey every 10-15years, publicly acknowledged; obligations for updating mitigation plans atthe same pace; compulsory insurance, directly financing investments andmeasures in mitigation plans.Urban Planning as an institution must resume legitimate professionalrights in monitoring settlement risks and be exclusively entitled tomanage city-level mitigation planning, responsible for the orchestrationof this multi-disciplinary mitigation work environment.
Bibliographical references
Balamir, M. (2006a) Seismic Mitigation efforts in Istanbul: ISMEP Short ofMitigation Planning, iiasa-dpri Conference, 13-17 August 2006Istanbul, www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RAV/conf/IDRiM06/
Balamir, M. (2005) ‘Local Administration and Risk Management’, in TheRole of Local Governments in reducing the Risk of Disasters, edited byK. Demeter, N. E. Erkan, A. Güner, The World Bank and MarmaraUniversity, 15-34.
Balamir, M. (2004) ‘Restructuring Urban Society for Seismic Mitigation’,in ‘Disasters and Society: From Hazard Assessment to Risk Reduction’,Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology,University of Karlsruhe, D. Malzahn and T. Plapp eds., Logos Verlag,Berlin, Germany, 339-348.
Balamir, M. (2002) ‘Painful Steps of Progress from Crisis Planning toContingency Planning: Proposed and Realized Changes for DisasterPreparedness in Turkey’, The Journal of Contingencies and CrisisManagement, Leiden (10: 1, March) 39-49.
Balamir, M. (2001d) Methods and Tools in Urban Risk Management, inNatural Disasters: Designing for Safety, E. Komut, editor,International Union of Architects and the Chamber of Architects ofTurkey, Ankara, 24-37.
Balamir, M. (1999) Reproducing the Fatalist Society: An Evaluation of theDisasters and Development Laws and Regulations in Turkey’, in UrbanSettlements and Natural Disasters, ed. E. Komut, International Unionof Architects and Chamber of Architects of Turkey, 96-107.
Beck, U. (1998) Politics of Risk Society, in The Politics of Risk Society, ed.Jane Franklin, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, 9-22.
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Beck, U. (1997) The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in theGlobal Social Order, Polity Press, Cambridge UK
Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards A New Modernity, Sage, London.Burby, J. R. (1999) Unleashing the Power of Planning to Create Disaster-
Resistant Communities, APA Journal (Summer) 249-258.Burby, J. R. ed. (1998) Cooperating with Nature, Joseph Henry Press,
Washington D.C.Coburn, A. (1995) Disaster Prevention and Mitigation in Metropolitan
Areas: Reducing Urban Vulnerability in Turkey, in In forma lSettlements, Environmental Degradation, and Disaster Vulnerability:The Turkey Case Study, eds. R. Parker, A. Kreimer, M. Munasinghe,IDNDR and the World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Coburn, A., Spence, R. (1992) Earthquake Protection, John Wiley andSons.
Columbia University International Urban Planning Studio (Spring 2001)Disaster Resistant Caracas, Urban Planning Studio of Graduate Schoolof Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory, unpublished report.
Columbia University International Urban Planning Studio (Spring 2002)Disaster Resistant Istanbul, Urban Planning Studio of Graduate Schoolof Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory, unpublished report.
Godschalk, D. R., Beatley, T., Berke, P., Brower, D. J., Kaiser, E. J.(1999) Natural Hazard Mitigation: Recasting Disaster Policy andPlanning, Island Press, Washington, D. C.
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Vulnerability assessment to floods in the frame of the LoireRiver Basin Plan
Nicolas Gérard Camp’uis, CEPRI, France, contact :[email protected]
In 1994 the French government issued a coprehensive program for theLoire riverbasin, called Loire Grandeur Nature. In this institutionalframework a multidisciplinary group was established, co-financed by theState, the Public Loire Institution and the Loire-Bretagne Water Agency.This group provided those agencies with proposals regarding a globalstrategy to reduce flooding risk in the Middle part of the riverbasin,menaced by particularly severe floods.This strategy, that has been approved also at a political level, considers apriority the vulnerability reduction to floods, by reducing communities’exposure to extreme floods that cannot be completely avoided.While reinforcing existing structural defences, the strategy looks at thelong run, aiming at improving forecasting and crisis management,reducing the vulnerability of people and economic activities, in one wordto achieve a level of development compatible with the risk of floods.The implementation of such a strategy requires time and the cooperationof a large number of actors.Relevant financial resources have been deployed to start theimplementation of the strategy in the years 2000-2006.Two key themes have been identified in the strategy: populationprotection on the one side and the renaturalization of ecologicallysignificative segments and areas of the Middle Loire Riverbasin.Considering the topic of this conference, the following aspects are ofparticular interest. On the one side, the goal of renaturalization implieschanges in the present use of areas along the river, so as to regain themto their original ecosystemic function, improving water drainage andcontrolling the balance between water velocity and sedimenttransportation.With respect to the first goal, the crucial issue to be considered concernsvulnerability, which has not been considered only from a socialperspective, in terms of coping capacity, but has been also measuredadopting a systematic and analytical approach.
In fact two systems have been thoroughly investigated as far as theirvulnerability is concerned: water systems and industrial plants. Checklistsof relevant parameters have been identified for those systems, relying onextensive review of past floods that provoked damage in industries aswell as in water facilities. The ultimate goal is to understandvulnerability/damage mechanisms so as to intervene adopting
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preventative actions to minimize economic costs and suffering to theLoire communities.
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Risk prevention plans in France: positive and critical aspectsPatrick Pigeon, Professeur à l’Université de Savoie, CISM-Technolac,contact : [email protected]
Main topics Since at least 1982 and the Tazieff Law creating the present frenchnatural risk mapping system (PPR, Plans de Prévention des Risques), thefrench State wishes to strongly integrate land use and natural riskmanagement. In spite of scale differences, local land use maps such asSCOT (Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale) and PLU (Plan Locald’Urbanisme) prove that the wish has come true : both take natural riskzoning (PPR) under consideration.Yet, 25 years later, numerous areas at risk are still to be mapped, andthe task is far from being completed. Field surveys may question PPReffectiveness, especially as concerns risk levels assessments and theirrelations with corrective works (such as dykes, drainage networks) andarchitectural adaptations (strengthened and blind walls in case ofsnowslide risk, raised grounds in case of floodplains, for example). Evenmore, there is a growing and official recognition that PPR should evolve.Here, we would like to investigate these officially recognized flaws – thelimits of political desire to link land use and natural risk mapping.Therefore, we have to find back the fundamentals of PPR : why thefrench State plays such a prominent role in that matter? It will help tounderstand why we can find new zoning types today, as well as the newlycreated PCS (Plan Communal de Sauvegarde). Indeed, this new tool aimsat reinforcing links between PPR and PLU. It concerns civil security, andacknowledges the impossibility to get rid of risks whatever may be thezoning regulations or the corrective devices enforced by the PPR. On thecontrary, it has become possible to show that they may prepare futuredisasters.
Focus on land use and spatial planningBasically, it is not possible to map natural risks using a juridically bindingtool such as the French PPR without taking numerous other types ofconstraints into account. Clearly, political conflicts and their managementhave the upper hand there. They involve the French State –which has todisplay risks by mapping, and enforces PPR-, municipalities –which seekto add values to the territories they manage-, and the citizens, especiallythe land-owners. The latter do not accept willingly restrictions to theirrights, and even less land-values downgrading…Therefore, present PPR mapping displays bargaining between thesepolitical actors, about diverse types of risks, among which the naturalones. Strange zonings are bound to follow, leading to question theeffectiveness of PPR mapping, at least at first sight. But thinking that
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land use has the upper hand on natural risk mapping would lead to avery delusive insight. In fact, the prominent place played by the FrenchState balances local interests, mainly because it implies the financialinterests of the State.itself. In case of a major disaster, the French Statewould act as a reinsurer, backing up insurance companies. It gives senseto the present evolution of the system as well as to the numerous localpeculiarities of the links between land use and natural risk mapping inFrance.
ConclusionThe french natural risk system may appear appealing as it seeks to valueclose links with land use management. Yet, its cultural components maybe ranked very high. They reveal the prominent part played by the Statein a still highly centralized nation..This system is currently on the verge of collapsing, because of its lowefficiency. It is poorly prevention oriented, and its economic costquestions its sustainability. It threatens the financial guarantee of theState. Although the present evolutions of PPR zoning try to delay thiscollapse, the trend, officially recognized, reveals the weaknesses of sucha juridically binding risk mapping integrated to land use management..
Bibliographical references
Albouy, F.X. 2002. Le temps des catastrophes. Descartes et compagnie,Paris : 172 p.
Dauphiné, A. 2003. Les théories de la complexité chez les géographes.Economica, Paris : 248 p.
Pigeon, P. 2005. Géographie critique des risques. Economica, Paris : 217p.
Pigeon, P. 2007. L’environnement au défi de l’urbanisation. PressesUniversitaires de Rennes, Rennes : 250 p (forthcoming)
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Making vulnerability part of actual administrativeprocedures: the example of the Emilia-Romagna RegionIrene Cremonini, consultant, contact: [email protected]
The method of analysis and evaluation of the vulnerability of the urbansystems studied by the Emilia-Romagna Region has always been appliedto the Rehabilitation Plans of the small-sized historical towns since 1990.This methodology has recently been applied in a larger sized historicaltown namely Forlì which has a population of 108.000; 10.000 of whichreside in the historical centre.The application (in the context of the SISMA Project - System Integratedfor Security Management Activities CADSES INTERREG IIIB) has had aninteresting development; the necessity to limit the “ad hoc” surveys (notcompatible with the time phases and financial resources of the SISMAProject) has resulted in a new fast method of study of same of the factorsincluded in procedural evaluation.The urban scale has stimulated proposal of urban interventions so as toreduce seismic risk which differ to those of the smaller historical townsand include fast methods of study of the urban tissue.
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Shifting the Hazards Paradigm: From Response to Mitigationin the Wake of Hurricane KatrinaDr. Laura J. Steinberg, Dept. of Environmental and Civil Engineering,Southern Methodist University, contact: [email protected]
The flooding of the City of New Orleans revealed the potentially tragiceffects of urbanization in a hurricane-prone environment. This papershows that, prior to Hurricane Katrina, the only strategy within thepreparedness/mitigation/ response/recovery hazard paradigm which hadbeen substantially applied in New Orleans was mitigation. This strategyhad been limited primarily to the building of a haphazard system oflevees and floodwalls. Coupled with changes in land use over time andthe loss of natural wetlands, these levees increased the vulnerability ofthe city to large and intense hurricanes. In post-Katrina New Orleans,preparedness and response capabilities for future hurricanes have beengreatly improved, with the hope that recovery efforts in the future will beminimal. Additional mitigation measures are also being undertaken,including a strengthening of the levee system to withstand the 100 yearstorm, bringing New Orleans into compliance with the 100-year floodplain requirement for federal flood insurance. There are also newrequirements that rebuilt homes be raised above the 100 year flood level.However, no significant change in land use has been mandated, and thecity and its inhabitants remain vulnerable to hurricane flooding. Calls bysome planners to return the lowest parts of the city to wetlands havebeen met with resistance by citizens and by city government. While thisstrategy would reduce the overall vulnerability of the city and would likelybe the preferred alternative if there were no pre-existing development, itappears to be a politically untenable proposition in the city. In summary,after Katrina, the hazards paradigm for New Orleans became even morestructural mitigation-based than previously, with little mandated changein land use. Preparedness and response planning increased on both thelocal and national level. Some of the other national effects of thehurricane and its aftermath have been to: revise the National ResponsePlan and the operational processes of FEMA and state/local emergencyresponse offices; raise concern over hurricanes that might strike alongthe East Coast of the United States; trigger a risk assessment of leveesthroughout the US; stimulate a rise in insurance rates in hurricane-proneareas throughout the US; and increase concern over global warming.
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Developing management tools for hydrogelogic risks: fromhistoric analysis to emergency plans
Fabio Luino, CNR-IRPI, Torino, Italy; Antonella Belloni and GiovanniCaldiroli, Regione Lombardia, Italy; contact: [email protected]
The IRPI-National Research Council of Turin and Regione Lombardia ofMilan, since 1998, have carried out some studies for the identification offlood-prone areas along river courses with the final aim to reassess thetown plannings of the municipalities located on the valley bottoms.In these studies many municipal territories were examined in the ValleStaffora, Valsassina, Valseriana, Val Camonica and also along theLombardy shore of Lago Maggiore: in this last case the study has beenpreparatory to develop a hydrogeological risk management system.The critical flood-prone areas were identified using historical investigationand morphological analysis. Initially a detailed historical investigation wasperformed to produce a chart of the most frequently damaged sites. Thiswas achieved by visiting various flood sites, State technical officearchives (Ministry of Public Works, Hydrographical Offices of the Po River,Civil Engineers, Record Office), public libraries, local and nationalnewspapers and municipal archives. Thousands of historical documentson past floods were collected, selected and validated to map the mostvulnerable sites.A geomorphological analysis was successively carried out: multi-temporalaerial photographs were analysed and field survey conducted to verifythe reliability of the historical data, the survey planform changes of therivers and to identify the critical hydraulic conditions on the valleybottoms.From the results of the historical and morphological analyses a flood-prone area map was obtained and two strips with different hazard alongthe rivers were identified.The third step was a review of the town plans. Aerophotogrammetric andcadastral maps were used to verify and update the urban planning of themunicipalities studied. Eight categories of land-use destinations formedthe mosaic map of the urban plans. These were divided into four classesbased on vulnerability exposure values, measured using the followingparameters: a) presence or concentration of people in the 24 hours or inparticular hours of the day; b) presence of machineries or properties; c)presence of social-recreational activities and/or loss of profit due todamage to the agricultural zones; d) presence of environmentallyattractive areas. On a matrix, the four classes were matched to floodhazard sites of the two strips: the resulting "criticality map" singles outfive classes of different critical levels.
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Based on these results, emergency plans for each municipality locatedalong Lombardy shore of Lago Maggiore were drafted and a risk scenario,related to the alert thresholds, was hypothesized. An intervention modelwas therefore designed, which details emergency procedures for thecrisis units of the local Civil Protection, under the coordination of theMayors of the affected municipalities.