Natural hazards and spatial planning in Europe

This book focuses on spatial planning approaches to natural hazards in selected European Union Member States. It presents country studies from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom and identifies common strengths and weaknesses in the ways in which European planning practices deal with natural hazards like river floods and earthquakes. The book analyses planning approaches and identifies the role spatial planners and spatial planning can play in natural risk assessment and management in order to reduce the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards. Finally, recommendations are made with regard to methods and procedures for spatial planning purposes. The following authors contributed to this book: Silvia Cozzi, Miranda Dandoulaki, Helen Fay, Mark Fleischhauer, Adriana Galderisi, Stefan Greiving, Jaana Jarva, Scira Menoni, Jorge Olcina Cantos, Kalliopi Sapountzaki, Heidi Virkki, Sylvia Wanczura. The publication of this book was partly financed by the European Commis-sion as a part of the 6th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP6) project “Applied Multi-Risk Mapping of Natural Hazards for Impact Assessment” (ARMONIA). The overall aim of the ARMONIA project is to provide the European Commission with a set of harmonised methodologies for producing integrated risk maps that can be used to achieve more informed and effective spatial planning procedures in areas prone to natural disasters in Europe.