Who does what?

Organisation of natural risk management in different alpine coutries

2- Floods

2-1 Crisis / Emergency
2-2 Stabilisation / reconstruction / indemnification
2-3 Risk knowledge
2-4 Preventive information
2-5 Crisis anticipation
2-6 Land use planning / protection
2-7 Forecasting / alerting

2-1 Crisis / Emergency

Crisis: in case of an event, the first thing is to protect human lives, avoid new accidents and limit the economic consequences.

Different types of actions / interventions take place during this phase:
- Managing the crisis itself on different scales (gathering of information, decision-making, distribution of the available means);
- Rescuing, in order to save human lives;
- Notification: information and instructions to the population about the evolution of the phenomenon and the behaviour to be adopted.

Emergency: at this step, which follows the crisis, the event is finished and any possibility for survivor is past.

It is time for immediate measures, such as:
- Clearing and rehabilitation of essential infrastructures (communication/ hospitals/ electricity and water supplies…);
- Temporary solutions for the mid-term housing of the disaster victims and their supplying (basic necessities);
- First estimation of the damage and steps to obtain that the government recognizes the "National emergengy state".

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2-2 Stabilisation / reconstruction / indemnification

This step corresponds to returning things to normal. It can last many years.

It includes:
- Evaluating the state of buildings and structures and conducting the necessary reparations / reconstructions;
- Organizing indemnification and financing of the works;
- Analysing what happened during the event and the crisis, in order to integrate past experience into the prevention policy.

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2-3 Risk knowledge

Before any action of protection against a natural dangerous phenomenon or reduction of its impact on the society, the territories or the people, it is necessary to:

- identify the phenomenon (= hazard, aléa in French) and learn about its general characteristics;
- identify our flimsiness (fragilities ?) in front of this phenomenon (= vulnerability) and understand their causes;
- evaluate and improve the technical tools of reduction of hazard and/or vulnerability;
- evaluate on a given territory the risk, defined as the spatial and temporal combination of a hazard and one or more vulnerability(-ies).

This knowledge reasoning runs continuously and on a long term, while being regularly fed by events (disasters or not) through back-analysis.

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2-4 Preventive information

The knowledge of the risk is essential and must be shared so that a “culture of risk” emerges. Thus, the results of scientific and technical actions are notified to any player and citizen of the territory thanks to many tools gathered under the name “preventive information”.

Three types of diffusion of this risk knowledge can be distinguished:
- Displaying the risk, which is the jurisdiction of the public powers (State and local elected officials); it consists in official documents;
- Informing / raising awareness: information and public awareness campaigns can be conducted by any group towards different audiences;
- Education, in particular through school programs.

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2-5 Crisis anticipation

When the dangerous natural phenomenon occurs, only an efficient crisis management can limit the consequences, in terms of casualties as well as material damages.

For achieving this goal, the preparation for the crisis concerns as much the civil protection as the local authorities/administrations or the individuals:
- Relief plans;
- Information for citizens about how to act in case of an event;
- Education and the security drills.

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2-6 Land use planning / protection

As suppressing the hazard is not possible, as vulnerability is more and more observed to be linked directly to the land use, it is essential to properly take risk into account in land use planning.

This can be done in several ways:
- Regulating the urbanisation and implantation of new activities through land use planning;
- Protecting what already exists;
- Laying down construction rules.

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2-7 Forecasting / alerting

Except in some cases (earthquakes in particular) the triggering of a natural phenomenon requires definite conditions, climatic ones among others (ex. snow for avalanches). Precursory elements thus exist. If properly observed, they can allow, to a certain extend, to foresee the event, give the alert and anticipate certain measures.

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