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Fioritto, Alfredo; Simoncini, Marta --- "If and When: Towards Standard-based Regulation in the Reduction of Catastrophic Risks" [2011] ELECD 916; in Alemanno, Alberto (ed), "Governing Disasters" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Governing Disasters

Editor(s): Alemanno, Alberto

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857935724

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: If and When: Towards Standard-based Regulation in the Reduction of Catastrophic Risks

Author(s): Fioritto, Alfredo; Simoncini, Marta

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

8. If and when: towards standard-
based regulation in the reduction of
catastrophic risks
Alfredo Fioritto and Marta Simoncini1

8.1 WHAT CAN PUBLIC AUTHORITIES DO TO
REDUCE CATASTROPHIC RISKS?
Natural disasters happen. At least once in lifetime everyone can expect to
be a protagonist or a spectator in a catastrophic event. The problem is that
nobody can predict when calamities are going to strike. What public
authorities can reasonably do is to provide regulations to prevent major
impacts on population and goods as much as possible. Emergency risk
regulation represents a relevant regulatory methodology that combines the
risk approach with the possibility of resorting to extraordinary measures in
case a disaster occurs. More precisely, it aims at mitigating the impact of a
catastrophe by providing preventive instruments of protection in the imme-
diacy of a disaster. Therefore, it combines both risk and emergency
approaches to crisis, in an attempt to guarantee regulation for specific
relevant cases. Since risk regulation offers protection beforehand, and
emergency regulation generally applies in the aftermath, emergency risk
regulation works in the immediacy with a specific preventive goal. In this
way, legal orders try to fill the gap in their resilient system of protection by
improving the safeguard against risks and distributing the consequences of
their occurrence with the aim of mitigating the impact of disasters.
Many case studies demonstrate the significant connection between risk
approach and emergency tools in the pursuit of disaster protection. By
focusing on some recent catastrophic events in Europe, this ...