Objectives

Mediterranean countries - like Italy, Greece and southern France – are subject to several natural hazards. Scientists are generally convinced that the main mitigation action is prevention. There is a growing conscience of this also among administrators and risk managers. In order to make a cost-benefit analysis of prevention actions, there is a growing need of comparable and, possibly, quantitative estimates of scenarios for the different types of risks. It is further needed to have global risk estimates taking in account also triggering actions (cascade or domino effects).
The improvement of ground based and satellite monitoring networks has lead to the practicability of early warning procedures for all of the naturals hazards. The effective implementation of these methods still requires a significant improvement of knowledge on several aspects, including the triggering mechanism and time evolution of the hazard sources, the development of fast methods of data processing and modelling, of robust communication techniques. These methods can be very effective for real time risk mitigation and emergency management provided that officials and people have been properly educated and informed.
This project aims at contributing to the improvement and diffusion of these innovative methodologies by:

These objectives have been pursued organized small workshops and meeting wherein the possible actions to be implemented were discussed in depth and the results reached by the relevant EU projects funded in the framework of FP5 and FP6 were rewied.
The main outcomes of the NaRAs activities have been summarized in three books under press. They deal with the state of the art of Seismic Early Warning, the implementation of multi-risk approach and seismology teaching at schools respectively.