Conference on natural risk and civil protection
Organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), DG XI and DG XII of the Commission of the European Communities, the Conference will open with presentations by A. Ruberti, Member of the Commission, J.P. Contzen, Director-General of the JRC, and by R.W. Witty, Director of the JRC's Institute for Systems Engineering and Informatics (ISEI) and R. Fantechi of DG XII (climatology and natural hazards research programme).
The agenda is to be structured by reference to natural hazard agents:
- Earthquakes and volcanoes;
- Storm, floods and landslides;
- Wildfires.
Sessions will be jointly chaired by a natural science expert and a civil protection operation expert. Two rapporteurs will, respectively, convey results useful for civil protection aspects and for RTD priorities on natural hazards. Each session will comprise presentations based on state-of-the-art papers followed by short contributions to introduce topical discussion. Delegates and perhaps speakers from other sessions will be able to join round table discussions with contributions from the floor.
Each session will address hazard identification and assessment, prediction, monitoring and early warning (including the implications of uncertainty), social and environmental vulnerability to damage and disruption, mitigation measures, learning from past events and from databases, and possible scope for overlap between natural and technological hazards.
Following the hazard-related sessions, the Conference will consider key themes in civil protection, with emphasis on how insights from social and management sciences can make important contributions to the management of risk. Risk communication, culture and public participation, aspects of planning, organization and crisis management will be examined.
The final day of the Conference will involve workshops on information sources and databases, ending with short summaries from the workshop facilitators and the report of the Rapporteur-General, followed by a final round table discussion on emergent key themes.
For further information, contact:
Commission of the European Communities
Joint Research Centre
Public Relations and Publications Unit
Attn. E. Rossi
T.P. 020
I-21020 Ispra (Varese)
Fax +39-332-789502/785409