Italian Civil Protection Amid Privatisation and Scandals

In 2004 the Israeli sociologist Avi Kirschenbaum published an interesting and authoritative book on disasters entitled Chaos, Organization, and Disaster Management.(1) The core of this volume presents the results of a well-conceived academic study of disaster preparedness in Kirschenbaum's home country: in this it is laudable but unremarkable. In contrast, the beginning and end of the book are both startlingly heretical. The first chapter draws attention to the huge increase in disasters in the last half of the twentieth century and suggests that it can be explained by corresponding increases in the number, size and importance of disaster management agencies, as these have sought to aggrandise the problem. Kirschenbaum's prescription is given in his last chapter: to privatise disaster management and make it a subscription service offered only to those who pay for it in advance.
Avi Kirschenbaum's book ought to be required reading for policy makers who deal with civil protection, but what would they make of it? It should be a sort of cod liver oil for disaster managers--foul tasting but good for them. In other words, rather than inducing the reader to advocate the privatisation of civil protection, it should stimulate him or her to marshal the arguments against such a move, and they are as numerous as they are powerful.
Suddenly, Kirschenbaum's book is highly relevant to Italy. On 30 December 2009, the Italian government emitted a decree-law (DL-195) to regulate the clear-up of toxic waste in Campania, a very necessary act, given the enormous damage to environment and health caused by years of mafia-controlled dumping in that region. Almost unnoticed in this legislative instrument, Article 16 turned the national civil protection organisation into a private company, with the Prime Minister as the only shareholder. For weeks before and after the publication of this law, politicians and the public devoted remarkably little attention to it. Employees affected by it demonstrated, and no one took any notice. Trade unions fulminated against it on their web pages, and no one noticed. Suddenly, more than six weeks after the publication of the decree, it all fell apart. The government retracted article 16 amid a welter of criticism and adverse publicity in the country's mass media.
By 2009, as a result of piecemeal legislation that left grey areas and superimposition of competencies and responsibilities, the need to do something about the Italian civil protection system had become acute, as was amply demonstrated during the aftermath of the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. However, as noted above, the arguments against privatisation as a solution are powerful, for example:-
• the reaction to disasters needs to be a collective responsibility of society
• privatisation sits very badly with the selfless ethic of voluntarism
• it is open to abuse by commercial interests and organised crime
• it would be unethical for a government-sponsored company to make profits out of disaster relief.
General Luigi Manfredi, Vice-President of the Rome-based think-tank ISPRO, conducted a penetrating analysis and published it on the Institute's website.(2) Among his arguments were the following:-
• Article 16 of DL-195 is vaguely worded regarding responsibilities and the provenance of funds for disaster relief and recovery.
• It represents a form of privatisation of the civil service, but without the safeguards for personnel inherent in public employment.
• The relationship between the national Department of Civil Protection (an appendage of the cabinet of ministers) and the new company is unclear, and hence the latter's loyalties could be divided.
• The decree could lead to assumption of power without adequate democratic controls, or at least to the complication of a chain of command that in reality needs to be simplified.
And then, equally suddenly and without warning, the government retracted Article 16 of the decree-law.
In point of fact, this is not the first time that something of the sort has happened in Italy. To begin with, modern civil protection had a difficult birth, as from 1982 until 1991 political polarisation inhibited the creation of a viable system. The left wing feared, not entirely without reason, that measures adopted to combat natural disasters could lead to abuses of power and, in the last resort, to a potential coup d'etat. Hence, for many years the status of the country's disaster management organisation varied: a department of the Ministry of the Interior, a Ministry in its own right under a Minister without portfolio... And in 1999 measures were enacted to make it an autonomous agency, perhaps modelled on the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, but potentially even more independent of central government control. For three months in early 2000 the agency actually existed, and then it succumbed. Meanwhile, much responsibility for civil protection had gone to the regions as part of the devolution of Italy, fruit of the Bassanini law of 1998. Clearly, successive Italian governments have been torn between the desire to conserve power at the centre and that to offload responsibility to lower levels of government, and also between the desire to have a civil protection organisation under prime ministerial control or one that has full autonomy of action. The result is a mess which has done much to diminish public confidence in how the state performs in times of disaster. Rather than leaving citizens contented and feeling protected, they have acquired a dog's dinner of conflicting strategies, policies and legislation. As they say, "è stata una cosa all'italiana"--done in the Italian style.
Civil protection, or emergency preparedness, is as susceptible to corruption and scandal as any other field of public activity. In the USA the early years of FEMA were marked by accusations against its leaders, who were periodically driven into resignation. A detailed political analysis of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (after August 2005) painted a desperate picture of croneyism and incompetence in FEMA and its post-9/11 parent organisation, the US Department of Homeland Security.(3)
In Italy, many will remember the scandal that broke in August 1999 over the alleged misappropriation of funds and relief goods destined for the mission to Albania in favour of refugees displaced by the Kosovo war. Despite the flimsiness and inaccuracy of the allegations, several key officials were forced out of office, including the Undersecretary of State for Civil Protection. Conspiracy theorists, who abound in Italy, would regard this as a political means of effecting regime change in the civil protection hierarchy. It worked.
Currently, as I write, things are in a state of flux. Accusations are flying about corruption in the apportionment of contracts for the post-seismic reconstruction of L'Aquila. Once again, the accusations seem to be little more than business as it is normally conducted in Italy. The aftermath of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, which affected 637 municipalities, led to corruption on such a scale that it has been suggested that only 25 per cent of the vast sums of money allocated to reconstruction actually reached the beneficiaries' This is remarkable for how little scandal it generated, not how much.
My fear is that we are in the middle of another attempt at regime change in the civil protection hierarchy. Currently, there is little sign of innovation or improvement in the system, which badly needs to be clarified, simplified and brought up to date. This is unlikely to happen amid a welter of legislation and counter-legislation.

Notes

(1) Kirschenbaum, A. 2004. Chaos, Organization, and Disaster Management. Marcel Dekker, New York, 328 pp.
(2) Manfredi, Gen. Luigi 2010. Una nuova società di stato. ISPRO, Istituto di Studio della Protezione Civile, Roma, www.ispro.it (accessed 20 February 2010).
(3) Cooper, C., R.J. Block and R. Block 2006. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security. Times Books, New York, 333 pp.

Emergency Command in Italy

Italy has developed a national system of disaster preparedness which integrates all levels of government through a cascading system of emergency command. It has responded to the need for devolved control of resources and has developed the professional figure of the Disaster Manager.

On average in Italy 240 people are killed and 75,000 affected by natural disaster each year. Though the figures are small by Asian or Latin American standards, Italy bears the greatest risk of disaster in Europe. A major earthquake in the Strait of Messina would affect more than a million people, while if Vesuvius were to erupt as it did in 1631 or AD 79 between 650,000 and 3.1 million people would be directly at risk. Italy has therefore put considerable effort into developing a national system of emergency planning and management.

Evolution of civil protection

In many ways, the history of civil protection in Italy is far longer than that of the rather young nation state itself. Considering only the last hundred years, three broad periods can be defined, respectively as follows: from 1905 to 1920 the reign of the liberal state, in which people were largely obliged to fend for themselves; from 1920 until 1990 the social state, in which government assumed responsibility for protecting and indemnifying the population against disaster; and after 1990 the neoliberal state, in which the government facilitates self-reliance among the general population and offers extra protection to particularly vulnerable groups of people.

As in many other countries, so in Italy the evolution of emergency management has responded to specific disasters that have opened the "window of opportunity" for legislative change. The pace was forced by earthquakes in 1968 in Sicily, 1976 in Friuli Venezia-Giulia and 1980 in Campania-Basilicata. The first reaction to these events was to appoint a representative of central government as Commissar for post-disaster relief. The Christian Democrat Hon. Giuseppe Zamberletti was the principal incumbent and his energetic and immensely capable approach earned him the reputation of the "father of Italian civil protection".

In 1982 there began a decade of debate on the revision of the basic national civil protection law, which had been passed in 1970 following the Belice Valley earthquakes of 1968 in western Sicily. This designated the Italian Fire Service as lead agency. In this context it should be noted that, whereas in Britain emergencies are often seen as public order problems which require the police to be lead agency, in Italy they are regarded mainly as technical rescue problems--hence the dominant role of the Fire Services.

Fear of the abuse of draconian powers began to abate after the end of the Cold War and hence sufficient parliamentary--and presidential--consensus developed to pass a new basic law, no. 225 of 1992, which was the first legal instrument in the country to institute a national civil protection service.

What sort of government department?

The inadequacies of emergency management based on an ad hoc Commissariat were soon recognised. The approach was purely reactive and it did next to nothing for disaster mitigation, nor did it result in adequate ability to prepare for the next major emergency. Hence in the mid-1980s Italy began to experiment with a Ministry of Civil Protection, headed by a Minister without portfolio whose funding came from the Ministry of the Interior.

Disaster management is as interdisciplinary in terms of public administration as it is in an academic sense. Thus defects were quickly found in a system in which the Minister of the Interior (i.e. the Home Office Minister) pulled the strings. Moreover, national emergencies require not only the full participation of other ministries--Public Works, for example--but also a firm hand from the Prime Minister. Hence, Italy converted the Ministry of Civil Protection to a national Department which receives instructions from the Council of Ministers (i.e. the national Cabinet). One slight irregularity remains, in that the Undersecretary who heads the Department receives authority by delegation from the Minister of the Interior and the Prime Minister. In practice this has not inhibited the process of managing emergencies. By non-binding directive of the European Union this system has become the continental standard.

Intermediate and municipal levels

Each of the 109 provinces in Italy has a government office, or prefecture, and a provincial Prefect, who is the chief representative of central government at the devolved level. Prefects have responsibility for police and fire services and hence were identified in the 1992 law as the co-ordinators of emergency response at the intermediate level.

Seven years later, in 1999, two paragraphs of the so-called 'Bassanini Law' took this power from the prefects and conferred it on the regional and provincial administrations. Bassanini was responding to a national desire for more devolved government which the prefects, as agents of the Ministry of the Interior, were not equipped to provide. The Region of Lombardy, for example, is 15 per cent larger than Wales and has more than twice the population of Ireland. Its 12 provinces co-ordinate no fewer than 1546 local authorities and the range of civil protection problems encountered is impressive, as the region encompasses both Italy's industrial heartland and a section of the Alps.

In operational terms disasters must be tackled primarily at the local level. In Italy this means the 8104 municipalities, or comuni, whose mayors are identified by Law no. 225/1992 as the chief local authority for civil protection. Most of them delegate the practical aspects of this work to trained employees of the municipal technical office, but they are not allowed to delegate final responsibility.

Architecture of command

Emergency preparedness and management is accomplished in Italy using the 'Augustus System', which is described in another article in this publication. Augustus is designed to provide a fully compatible means of preparing and planning for emergencies, deploying resources and communicating during them, and recovering from them. It operates at all levels of government from that of the humblest comune (Romagnano al Monte in Campania, for instance, has only 80 inhabitants) to that of million-plus cities such as Rome, Naples and Milan and, of course, the national government.

At the highest level, the response to national emergencies is co-ordinated from the Department of Civil Protection's headquarters in Via Ulpiano, Rome, next to the Law Courts on the banks of the River Tiber, and from the national emergency operations centre (EOC) on the Via Salaria.
According to the provisions made in the 1992 law, at the intermediate level of government Rescue Co-ordination Centres (known by the acronym CCS) were to be set up in prefectures when and where needed. Devolution has displaced this function to regional and provincial government offices. The provinces have the most direct role in co-ordinating assistance to municipalities, while the regions manage general support, as well as preparing hazard management plans for broad areas of land.

At the local level the larger municipalities house Mixed Operations Centres (COM), which co-ordinate the work of the Municipal Operations Centres (COC) which all of the smaller local authorities must have and which are often located in town halls. The level of provision for emergencies varies with the magnitude of local risks, with local experience of disasters and with the willingness to invest in response capability. The Comune of Florence, for example, has a dedicated emergency management centre with a brand new two-storey operations centre that is fully wired for information technology. When managing emergencies it also makes use of a very detailed geographic information system.

Volunteers

Italy is one country that makes very wide use of volunteer forces in disaster management. In Florence, for example the Venerable Archiconfraternity of the Misericordia has a 761-year-old tradition of not-for-profit work in emergencies. Thus, although the Comune of Florence has only 12 civil protection employees, it can put 5000 volunteers to work in the field within two hours of the start of an emergency and can activate 1000 of them within ten minutes. Likewise, Lombardy has 16,000 emergency response volunteers.

Volunteers in Italy must be organised into trained, equipped forces that require legal accreditation before they can collaborate in emergency management work.

Training and the Italian Disaster Manager

In Italy 24 universities and numerous other organisations offer courses on disaster management. Indeed, it is such a huge growth area that Lombardy has approved a Regional Standard for civil protection training. In the 1990s training was considered a national matter administered by the Department of Civil Protection from its multi-function campus situated in the Roman countryside. However, the demand is now so great that the process has been devolved to the regions and provinces. One legacy of the earlier approach is that the figure of 'Disaster Manager' has acquired a national resonance, though it has also assumed rather variable political overtones!

Devolution versus centrism

As in other countries, so in Italy there has been something of a tug of war between centripetal and centrifugal forces in politics. For a few months in the late 1990s the national government experimented with an independent Agency for Civil Protection, but the Home Office Minister quickly brought it back into the structure of delegated powers, largely because the Fire Service, as the lead agency in disasters, remain an organ of the Ministry of the Interior.

The conflict between central government's desire to satisfy demands for devolution and its reluctance to cede powers has produced some grey areas of emergency preparedness, particularly at the provincial level, where responsibilities are not fully defined. Interestingly, where provinces and regions have statutes that guarantee extra autonomy, civil protection has forged ahead, including in some places, such as Sicily and Sardinia, which were traditionally considered slow to innovate.

All things considered, Italy has succeeded in producing a clear, consistent system of civil protection with which, despite the usual lamentations, most participants are broadly satisfied.

The Role of Emergency Management Training in an Advanced Civil Protection Degree

Emergency management is a relatively new field but one that can call upon an 88-year tradition of scholarship and research. Whereas it is sometimes included with management science, in reality it is a distinct discipline that has other bases. It sets out to achieve four objectives:

- to match available resources with urgent needs effectively in situations of crisis

- to enable organisations to work together effectively under difficult and probably unfamiliar circumstances

- to communicate with units in the field and with other operational centres in order to achieve adequate command and control of emergency situations

- to apply the provisions of the emergency plan, as well as operational protocols and any mutual assistance pacts that might need to be exercised in a crisis.

This process requires an understanding of how specialists and organisations work. Emergency management is thus a transverse discipline, that seeks to create a common language and common culture among at least 35 different disciplines and professions that participate in the disaster cycle (mitigation, preparedness, emergency response, recovery and reconstruction). The process of co-ordinating complex emergency work requires the ability to understand and liaise with the exponents of the different disciplines, in effect to "talk their language" to the extent of being able to help the various protagonists apply their skills to the problems efficiently and effectively.

Emergency management is a holistic, applied, problem-solving discipline. It is indissolubly linked with emergency planning, business continuity management (BCM), emergency medical response and other practical fields. Its imperative is to save lives, help co-ordinate the rescue of victims, contain and reduce damage, and ensure a speedy recovery to acceptable normal conditions.

In the modern world, there are numerous societies which emergency managers may join. The Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management (formerly the Institute of Civil Defence and Disaster Studies), which was founded in the United Kingdom in 1937 and is a learned society. The UK Emergency Planning Society (EPS) has 3000 members and the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) has 4500. It offers a professional qualification of world-wide validity, the Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) examination. Throughout the world, IAEM vigorously promotes the following eight principles of emergency management (see Table 1). From these it is evident that managing emergencies requires leadership and co-ordination skills along with a fine understanding of what emergencies consist of.

There are at least 400 books of relevance to emergency management that are presently in commerce and more than 19,000 books and journal articles have been published on this and related subjects. When teaching emergency management it is important to utilise the fruits of research and to marry theory with experience derived from managing past events. Theory is the road map of emergencies that enables the manager to make sense of apparently chaotic situations. Complex processes must be explained and fully understood by trainees. These include command and control, evacuation, vulnerability analysis (social, economic and physical), communications (again, both the social and physical components), warning, search and rescue, and emergency medical response.

An emergency manager must be able to create, disseminate, maintain, apply and update emergency plans of three kinds. First there is the permanent plan that disposes resources. This requires impact and response scenarios to be built (with great rigour), resources to be audited and procedures to be designed and tested. Pre-emergency contingency planning is followed by short-term strategic planning during the emergency phase. Plans must be compatible between many levels of public administration, jurisdictions and geographical areas, and different emergency services. There is also an international dimension which includes the European Union and the United Nations, for example the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). Emergency management work can be local, inter-regional (in the case of a national emergency), European (in the case of an event that effects more than one country or is large enough to require extra help to be sent) or overseas (in the case of humanitarian interventions in developing countries). Standard methodologies for emergency planning exist and must be taught.

In terms of hazards and scenarios, the modern emergency manager must understand and respond to a wide variety of risks. Natural hazards such as floods and earthquakes represent one category. Technological hazards such as transportation crashes and toxic spills are another. Social hazards such as mass gatherings and protests constitute a third. In the fourth category there are acts of terrorism, which also involve intelligence gathering and responses by civil defence and military forces. Then there are the emerging risks: pandemics are considered to be the most dangerous, but climate change and shortages of basic necessities are also very important threats. As the outlook for civil protection could change radically in a matter of only a few months, flexibility is a vital quality of the emergency manager (see Table 1).

An information and communications technology revolution is occurring in emergency management. It has had profound effects on how the response to disasters and crises is co-ordinated. It is important to teach both the mechanics and the human side of communication, including the associated research in sociology, psychology and perception. As about four fifths of emergency planning consist of a spatial problem, geographic information systems are an essential tool. Activities are likely to be concentrated in the emergency operations centre (EOC), and the emergency manager must fully understand its potential and functions.

Recently there has been an enormous growth in business continuity management (BCM). This new discipline has been applied to both the private and public sectors of the economy. It is designed to make companies and public administrations resistant to disasters and crises and able to overcome their impact without going into liquidation. This is a very strong risk for business that have not made preparations and modern emergency managers are heavily involved in promoting preparedness.

In synthesis, the modern emergency manager is involved in creating societal resilience. The term resilience derives from rheology and is rapidly becoming a distinct philosophy of organisation against hazards, crises and disasters. In aiming to create resilience the challenge is to ensure the professionalism of emergency managers by training them well and endowing them with respectable qualifications. It is also important to ensure that the job of managing emergencies is handled by trained professionals, in other words that there are institutional roles for graduates. Other countries are forging ahead in this field (particularly the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and India). It is important that Italy not be left behind.
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Table 1. The IAEM Principles of Emergency Management

1. Comprehensive: emergency managers consider and take into account all hazards, all phases, all stakeholders and all impacts relevant to disasters.

2. Progressive: emergency managers should anticipate future disasters and take preventative and preparatory measures to build disaster-resistant, resilient communities.

3. Risk management: in co-ordinating priorities and resources, emergency managers should use sound risk management principles, based on hazard identification, risk analysis and impact analysis.

4. Integrated: emergency managers should ensure unity of effort among all levels of government and all elements of a community.

5. Collaborative: emergency managers should create and sustain broad and sincere relationships among individuals and organizations to encourage trust, advocate a team atmosphere, build consensus, and facilitate communication.

6. Coordinated: emergency managers should synchronize the activities of all relevant stakeholders to achieve a common purpose.

7. Flexible: when solving disaster challenges, emergency managers should use creative and innovative approaches.

8. Professional: emergency managers should value a science and knowledge-based approach based on education, training, experience, ethical practice, public stewardship and continuous improvement.
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Flood Risk in Florence: Forty Years On

[Written on the 40th anniversary of the 3-4 November 1966 floods in Florence.]

The night of 4 November 1966 was marked by severe storms, floods and landslides throughout central and northern Italy. At 3.30 a.m. the River Arno burst its banks in the Casentino area near Arezzo and by sunrise water had invaded the historical centre of Florence, reaching depths of 3.65 metres at the Bargello and 3.96 m at San Niccolò oltr'Arno. Water eventually came over the top of the Ponte Vecchio but thankfully failed to demolish it. Thirty two of the 112 deaths recorded in the 1966 floods occurred in Florence, and the impact upon architectural heritage, art treasures, archives and libraries was incalculable. The damage is symbolised by Cimabue's crucifix, a work dated 1290-5 that hung in the church of Santa Croce (flood depth 2.7 m) and which, despite painstaking restoration, was 70 per cent destroyed by the flood such that it now lacks parts of the face of Christ.

Marble tablets that indicate the maximum flood level in 1966 (and for some cases in 1844 as well) can be found on walls throughout the centre of the city, including inside the Municipal Theatre. Periodically, video cassettes and books of photographs are issued to commemorate the floods, which are clearly an important point of reference in the city's history and in the life of all Florentines over the age of 40. Ten years ago a major national emergency management exercise, Arno-30, was held in Florence using the 1966 floods as the reference event for the scenario that was enacted. Arno-30 took place only a few years after three seasons of serious flooding had again affected the western periphery of the city from Piazza Dalmazia to Campi Bisenzio, which in 1991 was well and truly submerged.

Despite these developments, many decision-makers in Florence still regard the floods as detracting from the city's image and hence as something that should not be remember very publicly. Nevertheless, commemorations will take place and the 40th anniversary of the disaster provides many people in the Italian emergency management community with the opportunity to reflect on progress--or the lack of it. This article will consider the heritage of the floods and some of its emergency management implications.

Updating the impact scenario

Anyone who has visited Florence in recent years will be aware that the city is very different from what it was like in the 1960s. Restrictions on traffic have been imposed in the centre. Electric and gas-powered buses now circulate, two new metropolitan tramlines are under construction (trams were abolished in Florence in 1957) and Eurostar trains arrive at Santa Maria Novello station via a high-speed intercity rail link. Many historic buildings have been comprehensively restored, though the restoration of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral, is so complex and delicate that it is taking decades to achieve. Moreover, tourist numbers have increased relentlessly, adding to the general overcrowding. Despite a steady reduction in the population of the municipality of Florence, which is now about 350,000, extensive urban renewal is underway on the flat plains to the north and west of the city. Light industry is abundant here, and at Calenzano there is even an oil storage facility with remarkably similar characteristics to the one at Buncefield in the UK.

In 1966 most of the physical damage was wreaked by a combination of water, mud and heavy oil from ruptured central heating tanks. Since then, oil has been replaced by natural gas as the main heating fuel, but on the other hand there are now an estimated 10,000 cars in and around the city centre. Where the Viali di Circumvalazione, the inner ring-road, dips under the main railway line, it is extraordinarily vulnerable to sudden flooding. Moreover, the city's road network frequently suffers from gridlock and work to expand the A1 motorway so that traffic can effectively bypass the city will not be complete until the end of the decade. Hence the plan to encourage people to self-evacuate from the city centre, which was published in the telephone directory in 1991, was withdrawn several years later for fear that it would only lead to more gridlock.

Despite the best of intentions on the part of planners, the hazard scenario remains almost unchanged. In the late 1980s a river basin authority was created along American lines, but it has had only a limited effect upon hydrological planning. The Arno is a flashy river--more accurately a torrent with serious pretensions to become a fully-fledged river. In mid-August its flow can diminish to zero, engendering severe eutrophication problems. The effect of a mighty river flowing through the centre of Florence is actually created by weirs which in high summer pond the stagnant water. In November and March the Arno can flow over the Chiusa di Santa Rosa, next to the Ponte Vespucci, with awe-inspiring discharge, roaring furiously and sending up clouds of spray.

River management strategy

Unfortunately, an ill-considered strategy to bring the national economy out of stagnation was put into place in 1967, the year after the floods. Temporary restrictions on the implementation of the 'Ponte Law' governing urban planning led to six months of free-for-all in granting building licences. The result was sudden, massive urbanisation of the banks of the Arno upstream and downstream of Florence, including the main pressure points where topography forces the river into a gorge and funnel effects occur on flood-flows. In 1967 one of the most vulnerable of the Middle Arno Valley communities expanded across the floodplain by 75 per cent.

The intense levels of development in central Tuscany mean that there is little opportunity to regulate flows in the Arno by natural means. Dredging and levée building are held to increase the flood hazard downstream. Hence, where possible, the River Basin Authority uses semi-structural flood defence measures and has thus created many casse d'espansione, parcels of land that is held vacant so that it can be flooded with minimal effects. A major dam and reservoir, the Bilancino, have been constructed in the Mugello Mountains north of Florence. However, this will only affect the River Sieve, a relatively minor affluent of the Arno, and in any case most of the casse d'espansione are necessarily situated downstream of the city centre, as there are the only areas where there was still space for them.

In central Florence the Arno has been dredged and the river banks have been raised and consolidated. The main obstacle remains the Ponte Vecchio, as little can be done to increase the flow through it beyond 2500 cubic metres per second (at the peak of the 1966 floods the discharge was 4000 cumecs). A bypass tunnel has been proposed, but there is little support for the idea, as it would involve serious hydrological and geotechnical problems, as well as huge costs. At least, decades of hydraulic and hydrological modelling, and of improvements in regional meteorological forecasting, mean that the physical side of the problem is now exceedingly well known.

Emergency planning strategy

In 1992 Italy promoted a national emergency planning and management strategy, the Augustus Method, which has unified methods of assessing risks and organising the response to disaster. It is based on the codification of emergency support functions for efficient communication during crisis situations. With regard to emergencies in Florence it provides the formal mechanism for coordination between the municipal, provincial and national levels of civil protection administration.

In the early 1990s the City of Florence inaugurated a new emergency operations centre in Via dell'Olmatello, located on the western periphery of the city strategically close to rail links and the airport. It was recently enhanced by the construction of a two-storey, state-of-the-art emergency control centre, which is shared with the Province of Florence. The latter has offices close to the city centre and an equipment storage facility to the north at Sesto Fiorentino.

Links between Florence and the surrounding communities have gradually been strengthened, but there are currently problems with the evacuation arrangements. The City's Civil Protection service has a four-volume emergency plan that is being updated in a somewhat different manner to the Provincial administration's fully computerised plan. Ensuring compatibility of arrangements for notification, departure and arrival of evacuees is a delicate problem in a complex, congested situation like the Florence metropolitan area. Moreover, the civil protection office of the Region of Tuscany, which is also located in Florence, has been dogged by problems of ensuring compatibility between the emergency plans of the nine Tuscan provinces.

Emergency response arrangements

The Olmatello centre is also the co-ordination headquarters of volunteer organisations. In Florence the Venerable Company of the Misericordia has an unbroken tradition of emergency response operations that stretches back to AD 1245. It has been joined by a number of other organisations, including several that deal with forest-fire fighting. All of them are registered with the government for civil protection work and they regularly train and exercise their members in this field. Hence, Pietro Bortone, the chief emergency co-ordinator for Florence boasts that if necessary he can mobilise 1000 volunteers within ten minutes and 5000 within one hour: given the wealth of experience available in the area and the high degree of organisation, this is probably a fair assessment.

In 1966 the emergency response was dominated by the so-called angeli del fango—literally "mud angels". These volunteers were mostly students or other enthusiastic young people but they lacked training and specific skills. For the last 15 years emergency response has been heavily regulated and increasingly subject to complex planning. In a future flood alarm, squads of trained volunteers would immediately start work on sandbagging the national library and state archives (both of which are situated on the banks of the Arno), lifting major works of art out of harm's way and conducting other pre-programmed activities. The municipal GIS system has registered the addresses and details of all pensioners and handicapped people in floodable areas and this would be used to give them assistance with evacuation.

On the more negative side, although the Italian Fire Service is highly professional and fully trained in all forms of rescue, measured per head of the population it is the smallest in Europe. Currently, initiatives are being pursued to expand it, including beefing up the volunteer contingent. The abolishment of military conscription in the 1990s means that there is now no surplus of military personnel to conduct disaster work. No one yet knows whether the increased professionalism of volunteer civil protection associations will be sufficient to compensate for these deficiencies when the next major disaster strikes Italy.

Flood disaster risk in the 21st century

Coincidentally, 2006 also marks the 30th anniversary of the industrial accident that occurred at Séveso near Milan and the tenth anniversary of the catastrophic flood that swept through the villages of the Versilian Mountains west of Florence. The latter event, which killed 13 people, had an estimated recurrence interval of 700 years. It galvanised the Tuscan emergency planning community into action.

However, it is one thing to have small mountain villages under water and quite another to have a major city, many thousands of tourists and a priceless artistic heritage under threat. Emergency management in Florence, Tuscany and Italy is still under-funded, and despite strenuous efforts it is still in need of further professionalisation, as well as greater political and public support. Fortunately, the basic model and organisation are very sound. We can conclude that as a result of changing patterns of human activity the flood risk in Florence has not diminished, but in any future event the emergency response would be vastly more professional and well-organised than it was in 1966.

In conclusion, one should not forget the other risks. In 1993 a very serious terrorist attack occurred in Florence, and in 2000 a fatal plane crash occurred at the airport. Earthquakes are a potentially serious hazard in the Apennines north of the city, while landslides and occasional snowfalls are hazards to many roads in hilly and mountainous areas. Hence there is no shortage of work for the civil protection community in central Tuscany.

Troops on the Streets

The deployment of troops on the streets of major Italian cities in the summer of 2008 has elicited much comment from around the world. In reality it is not a particularly unusual move. The same thing has happened in India and China at the same time. Moreover, troops have periodically been used in Italian civil crises, most recently at the start of 2008 to clear up rubbish accumulated on the streets of Campania, the region of Naples. Commentators have asked, variously, whether the appearance of armed soldiers on the streets of Rome and Milan heralds a return to fascism, and whether it signals the incapacity of the Italian police forces to cope with a crime-wave. Criticism has been fuelled by the usual xenophobic brayings of the centre-right government, which likes to garner popular support on the basis of fear of foreigners and utter disregard of statistics.

Let us consider the role of troops on Italian city streets and then derive some general lessons that are not country-specific. In the first place, crime is not peaking on the streets of Italian cities, which remain as safe as any in Europe. In any case, emergency services and civil protection systems are not necessarily fully demilitarised. In Italy the Carabinieri are a police force and a branch of the army, with full military organisation. In many places they are more visible keepers of the peace than state police forces, although not necessarily more so than the urban police that all municipalities have. Secondly, the state police and fire services depend on the Ministry of the Interior (i.e. the Home Office) and hence are as centralised as the Italian Army. Thirdly, as in many other countries, the fire service is organised on para-military lines, as the very idea of fire brigades suggests. In some regions even hunters are organised on military lines, although their focus is on the acquisition of the raw material for wild-boar hams, sausages and steaks. In other words, there is no particular reason to be afraid of military organisation.

Nevertheless, I have repeatedly written that the measure of the evolution of a civil protection system lies in its degree of demilitarisation [1]. When well advanced, this frees it from authoritarianism, endows it with flexibility and makes it sensitively responsive to the needs of the civilian population. In contrast, civil defence underwent a resurgence in the 2000s, the new age of international terrorism. Paradoxically, after the attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001, the decentralisation of crisis response was abruptly reversed as everywhere central states launched costly, ambitious and often draconian forms of renewed civil defence under the banner of 'homeland security' or whatever the local epithet is. The cold warriors came out of the woodwork, relieved to have an enemy again in the personification of evil, Osama Bin-Laden (who, of course, was very much a creation of Western fears and interests and is hardly well placed to be the grandfather of terrorism that he is usually portrayed as).

When, a few years ago, troops and armoured cars were sent to preside over Heathrow Airport in London it was said that "intelligence" had revealed a particular threat. Be that as it may, it was clear that they could not have prevented the shooting down of an aircraft with a surface-to-air missile from an address in West London. What they did have to offer was encrypted communications and the visible presence of armed men in uniform. In any case it was left to the secret services to gather intelligence and the police to shadow the infrastructure of terrorism and its command lines.

With respect to troops on the streets, we need to worry about the cities in the world where they remain present for years--Yangon, perhaps--and about what they do when they patrol. There is little that army personnel can do to control crime, especially if they lack powers of arrest. Peaceful urban landscapes cannot be treated as battlegrounds, or else wholesale violations of civil and human rights would constantly occur. Moreover, troops do not have the training for urban crime prevention. All they have is the intimidation factor and weaponry that they would be ill advised to use in all but the most utterly exceptional circumstances.

An uneasy, undeclared truce exists between civil protection and civil defence. The former is locally based and decentralised and it exists to tackle all sorts of contingency, from alligators in local streams to earthquakes to the death of the Pope. The latter is centrally controlled and exists to protect the civilian population (or its representatives) against armed attack. The two services are not necessarily distinguished by name or even equally developed. In Italy, civil protection is a highly visible phenomenon with bases all over the country and thousands of volunteers in colourful, reflective uniforms. Civil defence is a much more reserved matter and is seldom discussed, unless one is a prefect, the central state's representative in one of the provinces.

The future direction of the rivalry between civil defence and civil protection is inherent in the politics of devolution and centrism. The Italian government that put the troops on the streets is highly devolutionary, as half of the cabinet believes in freeing its constituencies from the interference of Rome. However, there is an element of deception in this. Politicians who work at the centre in a national government are hardly likely to cede power to local administrators, at least not unless they can preside over a solid, regionalised network of power. Hence the troops--solid evidence of central control.

In operational terms, the deployment of soldiers to guard major strategic sites is of little consequence. Their training in urban counter-terrorism is probably minimal or non-existent; their access to appropriate intelligence likewise. Instead, it is a visible indication of a deeper, more complex process connected with the inner workings of government, indeed of governance. Some of that process was once explained to me by a government politician at a lunch table in Lombardy Region, but I fear that it is too complex and too involved for a thousand-word essay, indeed probably too difficult for my feeble intelligence to grasp. In any case the march of events will also affect the process and determine, as much as political predilections, what the eventual balance between civil defence and protection is. The only certainty is that, as far as crisis management goes, politicians tend to be populist and hence are fond of short-termism. At the worst this involves knee-jerk reactions to events (e.g. troops deployed on the streets), while at best I fear it involves devoting only limited and sporadic attention to emergency arrangements.

Note

[1] Alexander, D. 2002. From civil defence to civil protection--and back again. Disaster Prevention and Management 11(3): 209-213.

The Value of Standards in Emergency Management and Disaster Risk Reduction

Civil protection is an inclusive process that involves public sector authorities, voluntary societies and the private sector. When emergencies, disasters or crises occur, a wide variety of organisations and jurisdictions must work together in harmony, yet under circumstances that may be relatively unfamiliar to the participants. Efficient disaster management requires common procedures, compatible plans and a significant knowledge of how other organisations are expected to perform under emergency conditions. In few areas of the world has this been achieved with sufficient uniformity between the organisations and jurisdictions involved. Thus, civil protection tends to be a mosaic that reflects policies, strategies, procedures and attitudes that are apt to differ between the various geographical and organisational components of the system. For this reason it is necessary to consider what can be done to harmonise operations and procedures so that they work well on an inter-organisational basis. One pertinent but unanswered question concerns whether the institution of standards will facilitate or hinder this process. Although doubts have been expressed, throughout the field there is considerable interest in this issue. This paper will offer a definition of standards, consider the principles on which they are--or should be--based, examine what they can be applied to and evaluate their potential for achieving positive change by creating harmonisation and enhancing the efficiency of emergency operations. It will review some existing standards in the field.

Definitions

Whereas there is no absolute definition of the term, a standard is essentially a specification of the minimum acceptable level of a product or service. 'Disaster management' (which is perhaps more properly known as 'disaster risk reduction') is an umbrella term for the processes of planning and managing the impact of unexpected events with negative consequences (crises, emergencies, catastrophes, etc.) that, in comparison with normal day-to-day operations, require a qualitative change in the way they are tackled. 'Civil protection' is the broad field of managing, and preparing to face, emergencies using the resources of the state, accredited voluntary organisations and the private sector. The emphasis should be on co-ordination and flexible styles of management that adapt to changing circumstances. In point of fact, civil protection should involve all sectors of society, including the general public, in taking some responsibility for their own risks and security. Because the 'theatre of operations' in a disaster is invariably the local area, civil protection should be decentralised to the local authority level, but harmonised and co-ordinated by the central and intermediate levels of government. One way to achieve this may be through the application--though significantly not the imposition--of standards for civil protection actions and services.

Applications

It is clear from these definitions that a standard should be a document that specifies certain elements and qualities of the products and services furnished by civil protection organisations. Conceivably, standards could be applied to disaster planning, crisis management, emergency communication, the storage and usage of information in emergencies and procedures for education and training in the field. In each case, a standard would need to specify minimum acceptable levels of content and quality as well as define, where appropriate, its own applicability and possibly the duration of particular activities.

An instrument that achieves such goals may become a valuable tool for judging the appropriateness, acceptability or performance of civil protection actions. Hence, mechanisms need to be devised to apply the standard to the activities and initiatives that it covers, so that a judgement can be made as to whether each of them meets a set of criteria governing its acceptability. As a standard should involve minimum specifications, nothing should inhibit civil protection organisations from creating products or services that are of superior quality: for example, courses that are longer in duration and more comprehensive in content than those specified in a training standard. This does not diminish the value of the standard, which should be designed to ensure that services and products do not fall below a commonly accepted level.

In determining whether it is appropriate to create a standard, the first task should be to conduct a feasibility study. As standards only work if there is adequate consensus over their application and content among the community of users, it is essential to have sufficient support for the process right from the start. Secondly, a standard should facilitate, not inhibit, the development of civil protection services. These tend to be heterogeneous and only in certain cases is it appropriate to strive to make them less so. For example, in the European Union there is no overarching civil protection structure. The national and regional services in this field reflect differences in public administration systems that vary from highly centralised (France) to heavily devolved (Italy), and from monarchies (e.g. the United Kingdom) and unitary republics (Estonia) to federal republics (Germany). Hence it would be counter-productive to impose a single system of disaster management on such a wide variety of national administrative systems. Thus, before proposing a standard it is essential to find out what is realistically capable of being harmonised through the specification of common terms of reference.

In broad terms, a standard should conform to the following principles:-

- It should specify the minimum requirements of quality, content, durability, performance, etc., of procedures, equipment, systems, missions, assignments or organisations, as appropriate.

- It should specify its own conditions and limits of applicability, as well as its constituency of users. In this respect it should aim to be relevant to as large a body of users as possible and should be based on a broad consensus about its relevance and usefulness.

- A standard should define the terms it relies upon for explanations and specifications. It should also seek to homogenise the use and interpretation of terminology so that key terms are broadly agreed upon by the users. Moreover, it should do this by aiming for maximum clarity and freedom from jargon and "technical density".

- It should not be didactic--i.e., it should not seek to train people--but should indicate what they need to know to provide adequate products or services.

- In order to ensure maximum usefulness, a standard should be freely available and widely disseminated.

- Finally, a balance must be struck between creating a standard that is permanent and one that is frequently updated as circumstances change. In an evolving world too much permanence will condemn the standard to increasing irrelevance, whereas excessive "tinkering with the mechanism" will create confusion and diminish the effectiveness of the standard.

Accreditation

As a standard needs to be utilised in order to demonstrate its value and effectiveness, rules should be devised for its application. A basic choice needs to be made between putting the regulations in the standard itself or devising a separate set. In either case, clarity is needed about how the standard will be applied--i.e. how to judge whether a product or service conforms to the standard. In my experience, this tends to be a somewhat arbitrary process bereft of scientific precision and is thus an easy prey to subjectivity. Hence it is important to devise a set of rules that is robust and fair. A further choice must be made between three alternatives: having a standard that is 'self-policing', in which applicants are allowed to judge for themselves whether their products or services meet the criteria of the standard (i.e. self-certification); creating a committee or other body charged with judging applications for certification under the standard; or allowing, perhaps licensing, freelance entities to engage in certification work, possibly on the basis of a common training scheme that deals with how to apply the standard.

A final choice must be made about the means of recognising that a product or service conforms to the standard. It may be possible to design a formal accreditation system, although this will probably require a legal framework, which may be a complex issue if the instrument is designed to function in multiple jurisdictions. Alternatively, a less formal means of recognition can be instituted. In fact, many standards involve a voluntary scheme in which conformity is the result of incentives and free choice, rather than legislative compulsion. The biggest incentives tend to be the need to compete with other suppliers of the product or service and the desire to convince clients that what they are about to buy into is of a recognisably good quality.

Alternatives to standards

Detractors from the concept of standards argue that they are unnecessary, bureaucratic and restrictive. Problems arise from trying to harmonise products or services that are too complex or different from one another to be made uniform. It is also suggested that the imposition of a set of regulations, as contained in the standard, creates an unnecessary bureaucracy designed to "police" the standard (i.e. to ensure conformity with it) and restricts the development of the product or service by forcing it to conform to a set of arbitrary rules that may or may not be appropriate. Moreover, opinions differ considerably about the meaning of the concept of 'standard' and what the resulting document should contain. A very close specification, for example of the topics to be covered by a training course or the format of an emergency plan, will have the effect of forcing anyone who wishes to have a product or service recognised under the standard to conform to a particular way of doing things. There are many circumstances in which this would be counter-productive. On the other hand, a standard that is vague would be unlikely to achieve very much in the way of homogenisation or quality control.

There is an element of truth in these arguments, although not enough to warrant abandoning the quest for standards in civil protection and disaster management. However, one should not forget the presence of alternatives to full-scale standardisation. These are as follows:-

(a) Manuals of best practice (e.g. FEMA 1995). Exemplary ways of doing things are collected into a compendium and used as illustration and inspiration for readers who wish to emulate the successes of those whose work is described in the manual. Often there is an element of 'lessons learned' here. The 'best practice' described does not require conformity to a set of rules but does indicate what has worked in the past and what has not. Manuals of this kind are means of utilising the value of experience, which is always a vital part of civil protection work.

(b) Guidelines (e.g. UN-OCHA 1994). The main difference between sets of guidelines and a standard is that the former offer suggestions, rather than firm criteria, for the improvement or correct organisation of a product or service. The use of guidelines recognises that there may be many ways of doing something and hence it is inappropriate to specify procedures and criteria too closely. At their worst, guidelines tend to be sets of vague hints, but at their best they can provide useful indications about how to create a product or organise a service. The main difference between a set of guidelines and standard is that the former cannot as easily be used to judge conformity, as the guidelines are not rigid criteria. However, if the guidelines are constructed with sufficient rigour, they begin to approach the formal structure of a standard.

(c) Benchmarks (e.g. ISO/PAS 2007). A benchmark is essentially a performance criterion. In civil protection it might be the ability to remove a certain tonnage of rubble from the site of a structural collapse in a given period of time, or the ability to transport a certain number of patients to hospital. Hence, benchmarks act as thresholds for acceptable performance and need to be reached and surpassed by whoever wishes to demonstrate that a given service is adequate. As there is a strong element of quantitative evaluation, benchmarks are difficult to apply in terms of services whose performance cannot be measured in such terms (for example, psychological counselling). Moreover they may be most effective when incorporated into a standard, rather than being used in their own right. A corollary of the benchmark is the indicator, which is often expressed in the form of an index (Takeuchi and Okayasu 2005).

The simplest alternative is to share common procedures on an informal basis. However, it is clear that, despite the alternatives, there is still plenty of scope for developing standards in civil protection and disaster risk reduction. The advantage of standardisation is that it should impose a degree of formality and rigour on the process of harmonising products and services. The standard should be instantly recognisable as a guarantee of good practice and reliability. This is especially important in a field like civil protection, in which lives need to be saved and property needs to be protected from destruction. Indeed, the seriousness of the issue has been a great stimulus to the search for common ground on which to build standards.

The next section will briefly review some of the existing standards in disaster management.

Existing standards

The field of civil protection is evolving at such a fast rate that it beyond the scope of this paper to conduct a full and comprehensive review of existing and proposed standards. Hence the following account will be selective and will rely on examples that are in some way representative or exemplary. It should be noted, however, that there is no comprehensive, overall world standard in civil protection and disaster risk reduction. For the reasons stated above, it is doubtful whether any attempt to create such an instrument would be successful. Nevertheless, we now consider eight existing standards and evaluate their advantages and drawbacks.

(a) United Kingdom Cabinet Office Standards for Civil Protection in England and Wales (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ERORecords/HO/415/1/epd/sfcpew.pdf)

This 16-page document of about 2000 words manages to be all-embracing in its coverage but simple in its approach and prescriptiveness. Published by the UK Home Office in 1999, it is the fruit of a broad and sustained consultation with the emergency planning and management community in the UK, which was asked what it thought should go into such a document. In this respect it represents a consensus. On the negative side, the England and Wales standard is short, vague and somewhat sketchy. It is written in terms of recommendations rather than parameters and hence lacks incisiveness. It has, in any case, been largely superceded by the UK Civil Contingencies Act of November 2004, which, as one would expect, is much more prescriptive in what it requires public and private authorities to do in order to prepare for emergencies.

(b) United States' National Fire Protection Association NFPA 1600 Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs 2007 Edition (www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/NFPA1600.pdf)

This 57-page document, now in its third edition, consists of five chapters and six annexes. It is thus comprehensive and detailed, and it reflects sustained consultation with stakeholders, whose interests and concerns are well represented in its many different provisions. It has the added advantage of being applicable to the private sector, through its provisions on business continuity management, as well as the public one. It is also very systematic and includes precise, rigorous definitions of all phenomena that it deals with. However, it is heavily orientated towards North America and is thus of limited direct application outside that subcontinent. Moreover, it is a long and complex document that, despite its good level or organisation and propensity for short, numbered paragraphs, achieves a high level of "technical density". Annex material amounting to more than half of the document is devoted to lists of North American emergency preparedness organisations. NFPA1600 thus represents useful inspiration for people or organisations that are interested in formulating standards but it is not universally applicable.

The NFPA offers other standards that are appropriate to emergency response, such as NFPA 1561, Standard on Emergency Services Incident Management System.

(c) SIPROCI Project Minimum Standards for a Local Plan of Civil Protection (www.siproci.net/results/default.html)

SIPROCI was a project sponsored by the European Commission in the mid-2000s that dealt with inter-regional response to disasters at the level of local and regional public administration. It produced seven documents which are available in eight European languages. One of the documents is a standard for emergency planning at the local level. This 11-page document includes definitions and guidance on the topics and structure of a plan. This work emphasises the strong relationship between emergency planning and urban and regional planning, which should exist but is often neglected in practice. On the positive side, the SIPROCI approach is simple and practical, but unfortunately this ensure that the standard is rather superficial and elementary. To some extent it falls foul of the wide differences in the approach to civil protection that exist across Europe.

(d) Sphere Project Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response (http://www.sphereproject.org/)

The Sphere Project was started in 1997 by a group of humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under the aegis of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Federation in Geneva. The Charter and Minimum Standards reflect the concern of NGOs working in disaster relief that the difficult political, social and military conditions in which they must operate can lead to abuses of human rights, as well as inefficiencies in providing disaster relief. The 2004 edition of the Charter and Standards has been published as a 344-page handbook, with sections on the charter (humanitarian relief rights and responsibilities) and standards in relief. The latter include specific standards on water supply, sanitation, hygiene, food security, nutrition, shelter and non-food disaster aid.

As it is the fruit of wide experience and broad consensus among disaster relief NGOs, Sphere has both moral and practical authority. It was the first standard for humanitarian work (see also VENRO 2003) and is both comprehensive and widely utilised in the field. On the negative side, it has not been free of criticism (Darcy 2004) and, of course, it is only applicable to humanitarian relief situations and cannot be applied to civil protection problems in general.

(e) Region of Lombardy Advanced School of Civil Protection Lombardy Civil Protection Training Standard (www.irefonline.it/websites/iref/home.nsf/index.htm)

This instrument was formulated in 2003 and updated on subsequent occasions. It has the approval of the Government of Lombardy, which is the largest region in Italy. The standard is applicable only to civil protection training courses offered within the region (which is home to at least 600 emergency preparedness training initiatives Alexander et al., in press) but its sufficiently comprehensive, thorough and innovative to offer an interesting model for similar initiatives elsewhere.

The standard begins with a codified statement of principles governing civil protection training courses. Based on observation, common sense and experience of teaching, this is intended to safeguard the quality of courses approved under the standard. It then divides courses into categories, for example regarding the training of emergency managers, emergency planners, volunteers (including specialists in sub-aqua rescue, forest-fire suppression, dog handling, etc.), spokespersons, civil administrators, and so on. The approximate minimum content and duration of basic and refresher courses are specified for each category. In some cases, for example regarding emergency response and forest-fire fighting volunteers, the courses are stratified from novice level to specialist and command levels. An organisation that conducts training in Lombardy can apply to have its course approved by the Regional Government, which will evaluate the application through a committee made up of representatives of the main stakeholders in civil protection. The standard is currently only available in Italian.

The Lombard standard has proved successful in granting official recognition and publicity to courses in a region in which civil protection training has been heterogeneous and lacking in evaluation of its rigour and effectiveness. Much valuable experience has been gained by formulating and applying it. The eventual aim is to ensure that no one participates in emergency response activities in Lombardy without having taken one or more appropriate courses that have been approved under the standard. This is intended to guarantee the quality of civil protection activities and ensure that they are compatible between the region's 12 provinces and 1,547 municipalities.

(f) Australia-New Zealand Standard on Risk Management AS/NZS 4360:2004
(www.saiglobal.com/shop/script/Details.asp?DocN=AS564557616854)

Published with a handbook that gives details of how to apply it, AS/NZS 4360:2004 is a comprehensive standard on managing risks, including those pertaining to disasters, in the public, private and voluntary sectors. As they use a widely applicable methodology, these documents have proved to be an important and authoritative source of support for risk management initiatives both within and outside Australasia. However, the standard only refers to risk management, not to the more direct processes of dealing with disaster, and the documents are only available commercially for a price in excess of AUS$100.

(g) US National Incident Management System standards (www.nimsonline.com)
(www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/nims_standards.shtm)

The United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and associated bodies have devised a standardised methodology and structure for managing adverse events called the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The need to integrate emergency response across a wide range of organisations and levels of government led to calls for standardisation of the methods involved. In 2006 a committee reported on the issues involved (Stenner et al. 2006) and recommended the institution of standards in emergency management, communications, the processing and usage of information, equipment specifications and other matters. Currently NIMS adheres to 25 NFPA standards (see above), and eight ANSI standards. The entire concept of NIMS is rooted in standardisation, which is an ongoing process in its development.

(h) British Standard in Business Continuity Management BS 25999 Parts 1 and 2
(www.bsi-global.com/en/Assessment-and-certification-services/management-systems/Standards-and-Schemes/BS-25999/)

In 2007 the British Standards Institution held a consultation with the UK business community regarding the formulation of an auditable standard in business continuity management. The standard is divided into a code of practice (Part 1) and a set of specifications (Part 2). These have now been published commercially. They include definitions of key terms and prescriptions for emergency plans and management structures appropriate to businesses and industries. The standard is comprehensive, in that it includes aspects of the problem such as dealing with the mass media and creating a risk register. As this instrument is not particularly specific to British conditions, it can be used anywhere in the world to help ensure resilience against disasters and other interruptions to business. Moreover, as the prevailing philosophy in many places is to regard public services in a business-orientated manner, BS-25999 is not only applicable to the private sector.

The eight examples reviewed above are only a selection of the standards that are currently available in the disaster management field. However, as noted above, the wide variety of organisations, systems of government and relationships between the private sector, public administration and civil society mean that it is difficult and perhaps counter-productive to aim for an all-embracing civil protection standard. This means that many standards in this field will be of limited applicability. In the interests of promoting the concept, the next section briefly gives some observations on how to build standards in disaster management for particular purposes and jurisdictions.

How to create a standard

It is perfectly possible to create one's own standard in any branch of emergency planning, disaster management, crisis communications, emergency information management, or civil protection training and education. The process should begin with a feasibility study that objectively assesses the need and support for the standard among a defined constituency of potential users. It is helpful to play "devil's advocate" here in order to ensure that a standard is necessary and appropriate, rather than any of the alternatives listed above.

At all stages of its formulation and application, the resulting standard must remain compatible with the following: any other means of evaluating civil protection work with which it must interact; operational procedures and protocols; laws governing emergency relief, environmental protection, safety at work and so on; and mutual assistance pacts. The standard itself will consist of definitions, criteria that explain the minimum acceptable levels of a product or service, and procedures for its application and updating. A fine line has to be drawn between specifying too much detail, or criteria that are too rigorous to be applied in any realistic way, and vagueness or laxity that diminishes the effectiveness of the standard as a quality-control instrument.

The creation of the standard should be a consultative process, in which the potential users are invited, perhaps for a period of one to six months, to contribute opinions on the project and on a draft of the resulting instrument. Once it is inaugurated, compliance with the standard should be monitored in order to ensure that it is adopted and utilised. Generally, this will only occur if there is sufficient consensus on its value to the community of civil protection practitioners. Finally, the standard may need to be revised periodically to take account of new circumstances or to adjust it to the needs and capacities of the users.

In the process of formulating a new standard, existing instruments may provide guidance and inspiration, but they should always be reviewed critically and any temptation to copy them without adaptation to local circumstances should be resisted. Finally, in two previous papers I formulated templates for standards in emergency training (Alexander 2003) and disaster planning (Alexander 2005).

Conclusions

The process of standardisation reflects the desire for order in a world that is increasingly complex. To some extent, complexity is the enemy of good disaster management, because it mitigates against efficiency and integration. On the other hand, it would be dangerous to oversimplify systems that must deal with communication, data handling, command processes, planning and strategy for many professions, organisations, jurisdictions and levels of government.

Despite these reservations, standardisation clearly has an interesting future ahead of it in civil protection and disaster risk reduction. For example, in training and education the creation of the figure of the professional emergency manager requires rigorous courses to be taught, certificates of competency to be awarded, employers in the public and private sector to recognise that it is essential to hire qualified applicants and roles to be created for people who have taken approved courses (Archer and Seynaeve 2004). Standards can help guarantee and maintain the quality of courses and thus contribute to the professionalisation of the field, which is vitally important if emergencies are to be managed effectively. Likewise, standards for emergency planning can help ensure that plans are effective and compatible with one another. Hence, they can contribute to the processes of vertical and horizontal integration between plans for different jurisdictions and organisations, which is a vital means of ensuring that emergency operatives can work together effectively.

In synthesis, standards will continue to be useful in disaster management providing that we do not ask too much of them, only use them where they are clearly appropriate and ensure that their limitations are properly understood and respected.

References

Alexander, D.E. 2003. Towards the development of standards in emergency management training and education. Disaster Prevention and Management 12(2): 113-123.

Alexander, D.E. 2005. Towards the development of a standard in emergency planning. Disaster Prevention and Management 14(2): 158-175.

Alexander, D.E., L. Bramati and M. Simonetta in press. Emergency preparedness training and education in Lombardy Region, Italy: survey of supply and demand. Natural Hazards Review.

Archer, F. and G. Seynaeve 2007. International guidelines and standards for education and training to reduce the consequences of events that may threaten the health status of a community. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 22(2): 120-130.

Darcy, J. 2004. Locating responsibility: the Sphere humanitarian charter and its rationale. Disasters 28(2): 112-123.

FEMA 1995. Partnerships in Preparedness: A Compendium of Exemplary Practices in Emergency Management. U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington DC (2 vols.).

ISO/PAS 22399:2007 Societal Security: Guideline for Incident Preparedness and Operational Continuity Management. International Standards Organisation, Geneva (www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=50295).

Stenner, R.D., D.S. Schwartz, J.L. Kirk et al. 2006. National Incident Management System (NIMS) Standards Review Panel Workshop Summary Report. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Seattle, Washington, 66 pp.

Takeuchi, K. and T. Okayasu 2005. Integration of benchmarks and indicators. Know Risk. ISDR Secretariat, Geneva, and Tudor Rose, London: 251-253.

UN-OCHA 1994. United Nations-DHA Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets in Disaster Relief: the Oslo Guidelines (Project DPR 213/3 MCDA). United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Geneva.

VENRO 2003. Minimum Standards Regarding Staff Security in Humanitarian Aid. Verband Entwicklungspolitik Deutscher Nicht-Regierungs-Organisationen e.v., Bonn, Germany.