Mitigating Spatial Relevant Risks in European Regions and Towns
The MiSRaR project is about protecting people, environment and property against the destructive impact of natural and technological hazards. Recent examples of such hazards are the 2005 floods that hit Germany, the forest fires in Greece in 2007 and the fireworks disaster in Enschede, the Netherlands in 2001. These events damaged the homes of countless people, the businesses of many entrepreneurs and had a devastating impact on natural beauty. A growing number of European local and regional authorities start to design and implement strategies to minimize the impact of such extreme events. These strategies are called Spatial Mitigation strategies and are the first, and very important, step in a disaster management strategy. The ambition of this project is to exchange experiences and best practices with partners from around Europe that have incorporated the corner stones of mitigation - risk assessment and risk management - in their daily spatial planning practice.
A hazard becomes a risk when the vulnerability of the threatened area is high due to the presence of people, nature and property. Extensive attention has been given to reactive orientation on disastrous events in regional policy development, while preventive orientation concentrating on spatial mitigation is an underestimated area. European experience and best practices are widespread but rarely exchanged, which often leads to reinventing the “mitigation process wheel” over and over again, while this is specifically an aspect of disaster management that consists of similar processes, tools and models that can be applied by local and regional government throughout the EU. The MiSRaR project has been able to identify and select European partners from six countries that deal on a daily base with the challenge of mitigating spatial risks in their regions and/or towns and are involved in spatial mitigation planning on local and regional level.
The MiSRaR project has an ambitious agenda. To identify, collect, review and disseminate experiences, the project organizes 16 thematic seminars each covering a specific aspect of risk assessment and risk management. Seminars will be held in each country and focus on exchange of technical knowledge and best practices, stakeholder consultations with relevant public and private organizations and a field visit to witness the actual implementation of mitigation measures. To make sure that other European towns and regions can profit from the exchange activities the project will produce a number of brochures on risk assessment and management topics and a Mitigation Handbook for local and regional policy and decision makers. At the end of the project each partner will organize a dissemination seminar in their home town or region to disseminate the project results and look for opportunities to advocate the use of risk assessment and management in spatial planning efforts.