Transformations in European Natural Hazard Management: There and Back Again

Today, technical natural hazard management represents the central mode of governance for coping with natural and man-made hazards in many parts of the world. In most European states, it is primarily organized through specialized agencies at the national or sub-national level, which analyse and assess risks to society, organize preventive and responsive measures and inform the public. In recent years, however, this mode of security governance has been increasingly challenged by new approaches to handling hazards that emphasize decentralized, self-organizing structures for flexible responses to challenges posed by complexity and unpredictability (see also Hollis in this volume). Resilience is an oft-used concept (and sometimes buzzword) arguably lying at the centre of this transformation in civil security that seems to cherry-pick elements of natural hazard management’s long and varied history. This transformation has been triggered by several obvious failures and shortcomings of technical natural hazard management, in particular to effectively prevent or mitigate major large-scale, cascading disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 (which resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant meltdown).