Natural hazards: key concerns for setting up an effective disaster management plan in Greece
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(2020) 5:38
TOPICAL COLLECTION
Natural hazards: key concerns for setting up an effective disaster management plan in Greece Yiota Theodora1 Received: 24 February 2020 / Accepted: 4 June 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract National governments worldwide are faced with the issue of managing the effects of natural disasters on the natural and manmade environment and the everyday lives of local communities. As the effects of natural hazards vary with spatial level and category on a case-by-case basis, new parameters such as climate change have been found to have a dramatic influence on the occurrence and development of natural disasters in recent years. Hence, there is an increasingly urgent need to establish a disaster prevention and management strategy. Spatial planning is becoming a particularly interesting aspect of disaster prevention and management, especially in a context where nongovernmental stakeholders of various forms are beginning to play a critical role in decision making and are thus establishing a new social actors’ network. Against this backdrop, the activation of civil society structures is an emerging challenge, while volunteer action is acquiring new significance, highlighting how crucial it is to ensure that the population is continuously informed and educated in order to maintain awareness and preparedness. This article focuses on Greece, and argues that it is necessary to update the disaster management strategy to ensure that the severe impacts of both traditional (e.g., earthquakes) and emerging (e.g., climate change) threats are dealt more effectively. It is claimed that this strategy should be based on thorough knowledge of the spatial layout and population distribution across Greece. The key to drafting such a strategy is collective consciousness. Proposals identified at this stage of investigation can be integrated into the policy choices for disaster management in Greece as well as in other countries or regions. Preparedness is everything, and preparation is clearly a matter of education. Keywords Natural hazards and disasters · Disaster management and spatial policies · Spatial environmental planning · Climate change and sustainable development · Carrying capacity and resilience · Volunteer action
Setting the context for the discussion In Greece, there is a remarkable paradox: although this country is exposed to multiple natural (and other) hazards, it has paid little attention to structuring preparedness and developing a disaster management plan that will ensure an immediate and effective response to an emergency. Hence, despite the efforts made to date, emergency prevention and management are still being addressed in a rather fragmented manner at the
political level, regardless of the scope of spatial planning. This is happening in a country constantly faced with various hazards due to its particular geomorphology and seismicity,1 as well as its important geopolitical position.2 Unfortunately, this lack of attention to disaster preparedness and management is appare
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