Risk, prevention and urban planning

An analysis of the European situation shows a persisting gap between scientific achievements in the field of natural hazards and their implementation in current land use plans. Two obstacles can be mentioned in particular: the lack of communication among experts of different disciplines including urban planners, and the difficulties in moving from reactive to proactive policies. Looking at ways to overcome those problems, the Eu funded Armonia project aimed at connecting experts with various backgrounds, achieving some interesting results: a state of art of current planning practices in hazardous zones in some european countries; a method to link risk assessment to land use and location choices, applied on the Arno river basin, selected as the project test area.