Applying risk governance principles to natural hazards and risks in mountains

摘要

The multidisciplinarity of spatial planning leads it to address all spatially relevant issues present ona territory. Among them, the question of natural hazards and risks gained a particular attention inthe last decades.Despite the permanent deepening of knowledge about natural hazards and risks, and the variousstrategies adopted to reduce their impact on societies, natural disasters are still causingconsiderable damages and taking lives. Obviously, the traditional approaches have reached theirlimit. The new challenges posed by natural risks create a need for a more comprehensiveapproach, risk governance.This framework includes risk assessment and risk management, embedded in a large riskcommunication environment. The place of the public in this approach has to be shifted frompotential victims to active actors in the decision making processes.In addition, the general dynamic of harmonisation of policies observed in the European Unionconducts to consider an harmonisation of natural risks related policies. Moreover, as many regionsin Europe are facing similar risks with different strategies influenced by their respective riskcultures, sharing methods and knowledge could help reaching a higher efficiency. But the transferof methods is hindered by the dissimilarities in risk cultures.This study addresses the perceptions and expectations of the public in risk prone areas, in anattempt to understand how far they influence risk cultures. By comparing perceptions andexpectations in two sites with similar risk settings, the study aimed at pointing out the elements that shape risk cultures, and understand how they could be considered when transferring good practiceexamples.