Abstract
Although the increase in the frequency and intensity of disasters assigns a key role to disaster risk management in current debate on sustainable development, the efforts of national and local authorities to develop risk-informed planning strategies and increase disaster preparedness are still limited. In multi-hazard urban environments, the main criticality to support risk-informed planning strategies is the persisting lack of effective knowledge bases focused on the vulnerability of exposed assets to different hazards. Hence, this contribution, according to the first priority of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction—understanding disaster risk—and by tidying up methods and indicators developed in both EU research projects and scientific studies devoted to multi-risk and vulnerability assessment, aims at better using available knowledge to guide risk-informed spatial planning. In detail, an indicator-based method to carry out a comprehensive exposure and vulnerability analysis has been outlined and tested on a case study area, the multi-hazard urban area of Campi Flegrei, located in the western part of the metropolitan city of Naples in the South of Italy. The proposed method may contribute to the building up of an effective risk knowledge base, enabling planners to easily access information on exposure and vulnerabilities to different hazards, and to differently combine them into output maps capable of supporting risk- informed planning strategies.
Highlights
The assessment of the likely impacts of alternative strategies and measures on current multi-risk levels would contribute to deduct the decisions related to risk reduction from the purely technical domain to which they are generally entrusted and to favor, on the opposite, participatory processes and shared decisions on conflicting planning choices aimed, for example, at improving sustainability through the controversial practices of “densification” [55], which may increase, in turn, exposure and vulnerabilities to existing hazards. This contribution provides a first answer, certainly not exhaustive, to the priorities set by the Sendai Framework and namely to the need of improving risk knowledge, by better using already existing knowledge as well as by taking into account all risk components, in a multi-risk perspective
The research work has been addressed to set up a methodological path aimed at developing a comprehensive exposure and vulnerability assessment in multi-hazard urban environments, based on the significant outcomes so far provided by European research projects as well as by scientific literature focused on multi-risk and, above all, on vulnerability assessment
The methodological path has been tested on a case study area, the Phlegraen Fields, a multi-hazard urban area located in the western part of the metropolitan city of Naples, in Southern Italy
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Comprehensive multi-risk analyses are paramount to support effective disaster risk reduction policies in existing urban areas, generally characterized as multi-hazard environments, with high levels of exposure and vulnerability, due to the constant growth of urban population and the increasing concentration of activities and assets. Even though the pivotal role of spatial planning for effective disaster risk reduction policies has been largely emphasized by numerous scholars and international documents on DRR, existing knowledge is often inadequate to support risk-informed planning strategies, which require detailed information on the vulnerabilities of exposed assets and systems [3,9,10] Based on these premises, this contribution is addressed to outline a methodological path to carry out a comprehensive exposure and vulnerability assessment in urban areas prone to multiple hazards as a first step towards a multi-risk analysis and aimed at supporting risk-informed planning strategies.
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