ARMONIA

Natural disasters are typical examples of people living in conflict with the environment. Vulnerability of populated areas to natural disaster is partly a consequence of spatial planning policies that failed to take account of hazards and risks in land use zoning/development decisions. Thus it is important to combine knowledge, technology and actors in the field of risk assessment and land use zoning to achieve effective natural disaster prevention and mitigation. The overall aim of ARMONIA is to provide the EU with a set of harmonised methodologies for producing integrated risk maps to achieve effective spatial planning procedures in areas prone to natural disasters in Europe. Objectives to be achieved by ARMONIA are: – integration/optimisation of methodologies for hazard/risk assessment for different types of potentially disastrous events; – harmonisation of different risk mapping processes for standardizing data collection/analysis, monitoring, outputs and terminology for end users (multi-hazard risk assessment); – design of and proposal for a harmonised decision-making tool structure for applying hazard and risk mitigation in spatial planning and of a guideline on natural hazard mitigation in the context of the EU Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42/EC). ARMONIA seeks to achieve outcomes that can mitigate the adverse effects of natural phenomena through joint effort of the scientific community, technology experts and users. The target is not only a scientific output, but a measurable impact on policies/practices for disaster mitigation initiated within the period of the project. ARMONIA fits with Europe’s goals regarding sustainable development in supporting environmental and security policies by facilitating and fostering the timely provision of quality data, information and knowledge, developing tools and improving management practices.