Hazard Monitoring for Risk Assessment and Risk Communication
The infrastructure in mountainous areas or regions with seismic activity is greatly threatened by hazards such as landslides, avalanches or earthquakes. MONITOR offers a basis for a standardised risk management of land-use activities threatened by natural hazards. The project's target groups and their regions vary in their risk exposure and their hazard potentials. MONITOR takes into account a broad variety of local and regional natural hazards and does not only focus on one hazard category. Early warning and risk evaluation monitoring is indispensable in risk management. Prevention of damage has to be correlated with land-use planning. In the project the methodological basis of preventive measures will be provided by risk analyses: For this MONITOR uses an integrative approach by considering the viewpoints of all relevant groups which can be seen as an important baseline for risk communication. The most important stakeholders identified are politicians, administrative bodies, experts, the directly affected population and the media. MONITOR will use synergies of existing knowledge and communication potentials and integrate activities at different organisational levels for interdisciplinary risk management. It will improve the methodology of risk analysis and the regulations for risk communication and thus support the entire process of risk evaluation and especially risk communication through a participatory approach. This should lead to transnationally-accepted standards of risk assessment and communication.