Civil Protection and Crisis Management

Definitions

Civil protection is a term used in several countries to indicate the institution that coordinates emergency and crisis management. This apparently simple definition hides in fact organizational complexities which in most cases stay beyond the comprehensive term “civil protection.” The latter refers in several countries to a single agency which holds the responsibility of coordinating the many others which interact and intervene on the scene of a mass calamity, ranging from firemen to emergency medical doctors, to health-care departments, and several others. The coordination agency is generally lacking own resources and means while being in a strategic governmental position, close enough to the prime minister or to similar key political levels, so to have enough authority to take the lead of otherwise independent bodies and organizations.

At the European level, for example, the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection is in charge of activating aid and assistance whenever requested both inside and outside the Community’s borders on a voluntary basis. This means that member states activate their own resources to make part of a European international team or to assist another country in need of help, according to the subsidiarity principle. The latter refers to the fact that external communitarian assistance has to be asked in case national forces are overwhelmed by the crisis and cannot cope satisfactorily with their own means.

In Australia, Emergency Management (EMA) is a division of the Government Attorney General’s Department, which pursues an “all agencies, all hazards” approach, with the aim of encouraging disaster preparedness, supporting states in developing their own emergency management policies and providing help in case of crises that overwhelm individual states’ coping capability. Nevertheless, no national law clearly defines what the legally binding mandates of EMA are.

In Canada, in 2003, responsibilities for emergency management were assigned to Public Safety Canada, a department which coordinates other departments, through the Government Operations Center, constituting a “hub of a network of operation centers run by a variety of federal departments and agencies, including Health Canada, Foreign Affairs,” the police, and others (see the website of Public Safety Canada in the references). Despite this apparently operationally centered goal, the Center holds also responsibilities regarding planning, mitigation, response, and recovery (see Mitigation ; Recovery and Reconstruction After Disaster ).

In the USA, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is in charge of coordinating the various activities necessary to face a federal emergency as well as to set guidelines, plans, and preparedness programs. Since its inclusion into the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA lost its direct contact with the White House, that is, its crucial key position that had permitted in the past the fast deployment of forces and resources. Perrow (2007) describes rather clearly the severe shortcomings and difficulties of the newly created department, as mentioned also by several observers on the occasion of the Katrina disaster. An interesting comparison among different emergency management models around the world can be found in the Fema website (see references below).

The term “civil protection” is sometimes used also to indicate in a general, comprehensive way the entire set of organizations, agencies, and forces intervening in a disaster. Following this philosophy, the public itself is part of civil protection for a number of reasons. First because peoples’ coping capacity (see Coping Capacity ) is deemed to be important in enacting self-protection. The active role the public may play in a crisis is then fully recognized and encouraged instead of condemning it to the passive role of a spectator, defying the willing to react. Second because many times laypeople are the first respondents: it is well known, for example, that in the immediate aftermath of earthquakes, those who try to rescue relatives and friends under the debris are the same escaped victims. Last but not least, the public intervenes in the form of associations of volunteers that range from rather professionalized bodies (like volunteer firemen or members of the Red Cross and International Red Crescent Movement) and NGOs to individuals who participate in various forms to emergency response (including the more recent movement of volunteers of the technical community providing free web services as described in Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, 2011).

However the term is intended, what clearly emerges is the complexity and articulation of any institutional and organizational form of emergency crisis management. The latter being an activity that significantly challenges several of the mentioned agencies, particularly those that do not tackle emergencies on an everyday basis, as will be discussed in the following part of the text.

A last consideration regarding civil protection reflects upon the boundaries of its activity. Among the functions that are generally attributed to the civil protection, when the latter identifies a specific agency or organization, besides crisis management, prevention and mitigation are contemplated as well. Problems arise when the latter must be clearly defined. In fact, the civil protection does not have an ordinary budget specifically allocated for the structural and nonstructural measures necessary for achieving risk reduction in the short and long term. Therefore, the idea of mitigation is rather broadly used to encompass the need for risk assessment and mapping as well as training and risk communication. Still, the boundaries remain somehow vague, leaving room for controversies and institutional overlapping.

Crisis management is the set of activities aimed at facing a complex, unexpected situation originated by an accident, a war, a terrorist attack, or a natural calamity. The two words actually represent almost an oxymoron, as by definition crises are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, disruption of normal life, chaotic environment, that make them hard to “manage.” Nevertheless, there are better strategies than others to cope with crises, to respond to the challenges they pose, eventually to exit them in ways that not only permit a return to normalcy but exhibit high levels of resilience (see Resilience ). In this respect, the term management refers to a set of general rules, deriving from past experience and understanding of how complex organizations behave under severe stress, that deserve to be analyzed by those whose responsibility is to provide help, rescue, and aid during emergencies.

The word “crisis” derives from the Greek verb “krino” which means “to judge.” In fact, the most crucial thing during a “crisis” is the ability to judge the situation, estimate available resources, and make decisions on how to act and respond to problems. Actually, this is the most difficult task to fulfill, making decisions under the pressure of the stress provoked by crises. Lagadec (1993), for example, suggests that whenever decisions are not taken, the chaotic situation originated by the event takes over and simply annihilates the reaction potential of exposed systems and organizations. Weick (1988) observes that action itself helps in finding interpretations to the crisis condition while reshaping its feature in the meantime. Nevertheless “there is a delicate trade off between dangerous action which produces understanding and safe inaction which produces confusion.”

There are many types of crises, which are classifiable also with respect to the initial event that triggers them. Actually some crises occur without any identifiable triggering event, or in circumstances where there are many events to which the crisis can be linked to, while no one stands out in a clear cut way. In this respect, some blackouts can be cited as an example, or some political breakdowns. In this contribution, only crises originated by natural hazards are discussed.

It should be noted that the term “crisis” may be considered close to others, for example, “disaster” (see Disasters ). In fact, in the UNISDR Glossary, the term crisis is missing, whereas the term disaster has many connotations that are attributed here to “crisis.” It may be held though that in the common use, the term “disaster” is broader in its covering the entire event, from impact to longer term consequences, whereas “crisis” refers more to the initial phases, and in this respect, it gets closer to “emergency” and “contingency.” The term crisis expresses the type of disruption that one is faced with, the situation in which it is necessary to decide under significant stress and disruption of normal life. Following this reasoning, while the term “disaster” depicts the overall condition for the entire affected community, the term “crisis” is the disaster seen from the eyes of the interveners, of those who have responsibilities and are attributed the means and the resources to intervene and respond.

This brief discussion points out that even though terms like “crisis,” “disaster,” “calamity,” and the like seem obvious, they cannot be accepted in an uncritical way. As an example, the book by Quarantelli (1998) titled What Is a Disaster? convincingly shows how difficult it may be to provide satisfactory and universally agreed upon definitions. Actually, different organizations, including EM-DAT or Munich-Re, or various national legislations set rather different thresholds to distinguish between what can be considered a disaster and what cannot. Not any landslide nor any ground shaking produces a level of damage and devastation so as to call for a disaster declaration. Furthermore, what makes a disaster in one region of the world may not in another, a death toll is considered high in one country and negligible in another.

Similarly, it is not that easy to attach the definition of a crisis due to some natural hazards to the level of disruption and losses that a specific event may provoke. In the following paragraphs, some crucial elements and factors generating a crisis and requiring specific actions for its control and management in the aftermath of a natural extreme will be discussed.

Here, it will suffice to list some specific conditions that can be considered as specifically characterizing crises linked to natural events. The verb “linked” and not due to or provoked by is used because the assumption here is that not only large magnitude events provoke crises, the latter can arise also as a consequence of somewhat medium or even minor environmental stress, depending on the weaknesses of exposed systems. In fact, a crisis may be originated either by a severe natural event, for example, a high magnitude earthquake, a fast landslide mobilizing large volumes, a strong volcanic eruption, or be the consequence of highly vulnerable exposed systems (see Vulnerability ).

Therefore, in investigating the types of crises that may occur as consequence of some natural event be it very severe or not, both the characteristics of the threat and of exposed systems must be identified and described.

Types of crises

Following what has been stated above, types of crises will be classified according to hazard and vulnerability aspects.

With respect to the first, spatial and time factors should be considered. From a spatial point of view, hazards may generate local, regional, or multisite events. Local events, like landslides, avalanches, or tornadoes, are such that they hit a given place, provoking concentrated damages and losses. In this case, even though the event can be very severe and provoke significant local disruption, it is possible to delimitate an area, an event core, around which a corona and a periphery from which help may come and to which victims can be temporarily or permanently evacuated can be clearly drawn. In terms of crises management, a local unit to tackle the event from a close post is generally sent so as to check needs and demands arising from the field and then control the situation from a safe place at the shortest possible distance from the core area. Concentration of rescuers, teams, and support goods must be managed and organized so as to avoid congestion that may end up getting the opposite result to the intended.

Regional events, on the contrary, involve large areas, comprising different types of settlements and infrastructures, from rural/natural areas to highly urbanized to metropolitan. Large regional events may be transboundary, across several administrative borders, including regional and national. In this case, several teams will be sent to the area; a number of advanced units must be forecasted and positioned in strategic zones. Challenges are clearly larger than in the case of local events, because of the extent of territories and the expectedly larger numbers of affected people. Whenever regional events affect different jurisdictions or even nations, a complex issue of coordination among levels of government, different governments, and authorities arises, making the crisis easily escalate beyond the control and management capacity of any of the involved authorities or agencies.

The adjective multisite can be attributed to otherwise local events that occur simultaneously in different places, for example, forest fires in the dry period or a storm affecting several places in the same days. Even though events like a fire or a landslide or a storm hit individual places, their contemporary occurrence puts a much stronger pressure on intervention agencies and teams. In fact, while local events, even though very severe, permit to concentrate response forces, multisite events challenge response teams, in that resources and means must be dispatched at the same time to a variety of places. The fires which occurred in Southern Europe in the summer of 2007 are a clear example of such events that distressed significantly the Community Mechanism of the European Union and required the rapid displacement of fire fighters from France to Portugal to Italy to Greece.

As far as time factors are concerned, as shown in Table 1, two criteria must be borne in mind. The first refers to the time of onset of an extreme event and the consequent crisis. Some natural events can be sudden and rather unexpected, not so much in general as for the actual circumstance, the hour and the day in which they occur. In other words, as commented by Hewitt (1983) in his interpretation of calamities, there is the possibility to forecast most natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and landslides which occur in areas that are prone to them and historical evidence exists of their occurrence in the past. Nevertheless, the exact moment when they will occur may not be predictable, as premonitory signals are either weak, or inexistent, or highly uncertain.

Civil Protection and Crisis Management, Table 1 Issues arising in crises that are differently characterized in terms of spatial and temporal scales. Self-elaboration. Concepts in this table can be found in Chaps. 2 and 4 of Menoni and Margottini (2011)

Events characterized by fast onset may generate sudden, unexpected crises, particularly when mitigation has not or has been poorly carried out. Early warning and prealert is either impossible or possible with only few seconds to minutes in advance, so that crises start when most damages and losses have already occurred. Events like earthquakes, debris, and mud flows are not only sudden but also rather rapid in their development; in a short or very short time, they deploy all their destructive potential, leaving to rescuers only the possibility to respond to losses and death toll.

Events characterized by slow or relatively slow onset, like plain floods or droughts, may be predicted in advance and actions can be taken to protect people and goods as well as to secure the most critical and strategic facilities and places (see Early Warning Systems ).

Even though examples have been provided for slow and rapid onset events, it is noteworthy that they are only indicative and cannot be considered as fully exhaustive or satisfactory. In fact, there are large earthquakes that are announced by a series of minor tremors months ahead; there are ash crises that can or cannot be followed by a big explosion; some types of landslides do show clear signals of movement, others do not. What can be said therefore is that monitoring devices, complete warning systems, comprising besides the technical component also the social and logistic aspects, may significantly change the type of crisis, from largely unexpected to highly anticipated. The ability to generate event scenarios, previous training, exercises and simulations permit to be ready for a given event in large advance, so as to downscale the magnitude of the consequent crisis.

What is crucial in most if not all instances described above is the capacity to deal with uncertainties and make decisions despite scientific and other types of uncertainties (including legal, institutional, societal, see De Marchi 1995). In fact, the classification of crises, as mentioned above, cannot be strictly associated to the characteristics of the threats. The interface between the latter and the exposed systems, considered not only as physical but also organizational and social, is equally important to determine how a crisis will look. As suggested by Sarewitz et al. (2000), not only by reducing the scientific uncertainty associated with some natural hazards one may improve the coping capacity (see Coping Capacity ), but also by lowering all other types of uncertainties, particularly legal, institutional, and societal. By making timing and good decisions, the catastrophic potential of some events may be lowered by reinforcing the response capacity of likely to be affected systems.

In this respect, clearly, the vulnerability of the latter plays a key role.

It would be too long and perhaps beyond the scope of the present contribution to list the variety of conditions that may shape crises, according to the characteristics of the physical built environment, land use patterns, and the mode of use of buildings in exposed areas. Clearly, all those factors influence some logistics of the crises, in terms for example of accessibility to damaged zones and to resources and facilities (Ceudech and Galderisi 2010); they also strictly influence the extent of physical damage, which in turn translates into number of affected people and extent of resources to be deployed (for partial or total evacuation, etc., see also Evacuation ).

Another vulnerability facet determining the level of crisis can be labeled as systemic or functional. How well and how long strategic facilities like lifelines can provide service is crucial to sustain help, search, and rescue activities and therefore directly influence the level of control that can be sustained by crisis managers.

Among the variables identifying communities’ vulnerability and resilience, the response capacity of established organizations, like the firemen, the army, and the medical doctors, is essential. The response system constitutes a sort of standardized and predetermined body, whose preparation and training is independent from the specific features of the crisis at stake. According to the practical experience gained in the field within an operational organization like the firemen, a fundamental lesson that can be suggested refers to the importance of being able to rely on established rules and standardized procedures at least for the most repetitive tasks, for those operations and to use those devices that are most common. Formalized crisis management models may significantly improve the performance of teams, as they permit to achieve a good level of response at least for the most repetitive and trivial operations while devoting due energy to what really stands out (Wybo et al. 2001). Without standardization and preparation, coupled with strategic management, it would be extremely difficult to even recognize exceptions and surprises.

Last but not least, as for time factors, duration of crises must be accounted for. Most plain floods, for example, may affect very large portions of a given territory but are not likely to last for long. After days, people will be able to return to their houses unless severely affected or contaminated and start reconstruction (see Recovery and Reconstruction After Disaster ). Earthquakes would require long-term stay in temporary shelters, whereas the crisis itself may last for a number of weeks. In this case, turnover among rescuers must be carefully planned and mechanisms for exchange of solutions and information must be set up.

Models of crisis management

According to common sense, crisis management requires the presence of a strong subject able to lead the team working on the disaster scene so as to achieve the best solutions in the shortest time. While this idea holds certainly some truth, particularly when the necessity to make decisions and to lead the event instead of just being at its mercy are considered, in general, some authors (Lagadec 1995; Reason 1997) contradict the idea that centralizing decisions and actions as well as making coping organization hierarchical actually improve response. In fact, the opposite has been demonstrated. Highly hierarchical organizations are not able to respond fast to changes and be flexible enough to react to surprises and unexpected situations. They require a long chain of orders and decisions to be followed and do not allow for much initiative to those in the field, who nevertheless have the direct grasp and perception of events, even though they lack a supervision of the entire scene and of the many interconnections among areas, resources, and systems.

A good balance must be sought between one person or restricted groups’ ability to control and be in charge of the situation on the one side and the personnel who are at site and have a direct vision of the event on the other, so as to guarantee decisions and leadership and, in the meantime, allow for sufficient flexibility.

Often recalled in the crisis management field is also the opposition between improvisation and preparation. To a certain extent, this opposition is linked to the one discussed above between hierarchical and “democratic” organizations. In fact, hierarchical organizations tend to rely heavily on established plans, whereas local cells guaranteed enough autonomy may take fast decisions more tailored to the upcoming situation.

One way of combining the two needs, that is, take control of the entire crisis scene, particularly when the latter is complex and extended over large areas, and the need to be “close” to the site, where the incident or the natural event occurred, is constituted by a model of operation called “Incident Command System.” The latter makes part of the recently reorganized “National Incident Management System” promoted within the US Homeland Security (2008) as a model for managing large emergencies. Such a model, already well established since the 1970s, has spread beyond the USA and is currently adopted, though under different names, in many countries worldwide.

“The NIMS is based on the premise that utilization of a common incident management framework will give emergency management/response personnel a flexible but standardized system for emergency management and incident response activities. NIMS is flexible because the system components can be utilized to develop plans, processes, procedures, agreements, and roles for all types of incidents; it is applicable to any incident regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity. Additionally, NIMS provides an organized set of standardized operational structures, which is critical in allowing disparate organizations and agencies to work together in a predictable, coordinated manner” (Homeland Security 2008, p. 6). According to the model, local cells are sent to the scene with the capability to guarantee information exchange among those in the disaster scene and among the various organizations present on site and their respective operation centers. The incident command system is therefore constituted by an advanced group of technically skilled personnel who are also granted the capability to decide some immediate actions on site, coordinate the various organizations, and guarantee information and exact request of resources to each operational center and to the main emergency control room.

In the case of natural disaster, this organizational mode has to be adapted to the environmental and social contexts and to the characteristics of the hazard, particularly as far as the spatial features described above are concerned. Several challenges have to be met in adapting the NIMS to individual countries’ characteristics and previous mode of operating. For example, the system requires the extensive use of technical terms and standardized documents. Both have to be “translated” linguistically and also semantically in newly produced documents and then a period of extended training must be foreseen. The transition from previous models to the new, even though more efficient structure, requires planning and the provision of additional resources.

In the case of a local hazard, an advanced command post may be enough; the same cannot be held for regional or multisite events, where clearly a net of advanced command posts must be coordinated so as to guarantee the correct treatment of each site where an event has occurred.

Civil protection and crisis management in a nutshell

In the previous section, the model of intervention, whether highly centralized or distributed, whether hierarchical or flexible, has been shortly discussed. In this section, the much more complex issue of how civil protection, as initially defined, manage crisis will be addressed.

Drawing upon Cherns and Bryant’s (1984) work on the construction industry, it can be held that also crisis management requires inevitably the coordination of a complex temporary multiorganization that must achieve a unique goal (facing and exiting the crisis condition) in the shortest time and reducing as much as possible losses and errors. First, because crisis management requires the presence and the action of various agencies and organizations, ranging from the firemen, to the police, to the army, to the agencies in charge of environmental assessments, health indicators, etc. Those agencies and organizations share (or should share) a common objective, solving the crisis, but are characterized by their own culture, by their political and social mission, by their means and resources. Some of the organizations involved in the crisis are dealing with “minor” or “normal” emergencies everyday on a routine basis, for example, firemen or emergency doctors. Others are involved in crisis management only occasionally, depending on the event to be tackled, for example, lifelines managing companies, public health agencies, etc.

Those organizations do not generally meet on a routine basis, hardly know each other, both as organizations and as individuals, which makes coordination and management particularly challenging, among other reasons because the one who will be in charge of coordinating must get the approval and respect of all involved parties. What Cherns and Bryant (1984) say about the construction industry perfectly fits also the crisis management arena: “Relationships [among the various bodies] are formally governed by the contract [in the case of crisis management the contingency plan or other formal governmental arrangements and protocols can be considered], but are supplemented and moderated by informal understandings and practices which have evolved to cope with the unforeseen, sometimes unforeseeable difficulties that characterize [disasters].”

Unfortunately, few studies have been devoted to analyzing the difficulties and the solutions found by the temporary multiple organizations in charge of crisis management in given circumstances and under different crisis duration. Some work that can be quoted refers to organizations under stress, how they cope and how they can be brought to react better and even with success. A recent relevant work in this direction is provided by Comfort (2007) who suggests that beyond control, coordination, and communication capabilities, the real challenge “is to build the capacity for cognition at multiple levels of organisation and action in the assessment of risk to vulnerable communities.” In her contribution, Comfort stresses the importance of cognition, as the capacity of multiple organizations to build a common understanding and interpretation of the evolving emergencies and act accordingly.

In general terms, it can be said that much more research has been carried out with respect to what happens within the same organization under stress, whereas little has been done with respect to the intercorporate dimension, that is, among distinct organizations. In general it can be said that difficulties encountered within the same organizations, for example, relatively to information exchange, decision making, identification of available resources, are exacerbated when a number of organizations must work together, particularly when such circumstance is temporary and not too frequent.

A specific point should be raised with respect to international crisis management, when aid is given to poor and developing countries. In fact, such intervention often sees the convergence of massive forces from a variety of countries in the affected place. Recent examples are the intervention on the occasion of the devastating tsunami hitting Southern Eastern Asia in 2004 (see Christoplos 2006) and of the earthquake in Haiti, January 2010. As it is already very complex to achieve coordination and cooperation among different organizations of the same country, one may easily imagine the almost insurmountable difficulties when the latter must be achieved among organizations pertaining to different countries. In this case, lack of coordination may be dramatic, producing overredundancy of some goods, complete lack of others, mismanagement in the form of goods supplied where and when they are least needed, tragic delays where they are urgent, etc. In addition to the multiple temporary organizations of different countries and speaking different languages, problems of logistics, understanding of the social, political, historic, and cultural context are also crucial, leading to a variety of mistakes, sometimes severe. There are not simple solutions to those problems; nevertheless, some elements may be considered to improve current practices. On the side of aiding countries, what can be asked is a higher understanding of the social and cultural context before providing help, building on experience to avoid errors already committed in the past, avoiding putting too much emphasis on fast results to be shown to donors, in favor of deeper analysis of actual needs, and identifying where resources can be invested so as to obtain the best results for the victims. On the side of recipients, what would be clearly ideal is the training of local responsible personnel able to direct materials and goods, to dispatch help to the most affected areas, and to provide guidance to international and external agencies. At the very least, local authorities should be able to interface with international agencies so as to avoid to be completely overridden, with the uncomfortable but almost inevitable outcome of money and resources spent haphazardly.

Main characteristics of crises today and potential challenges of tomorrow

Challenges can be grouped according to whether they are intra- or interorganizational, that is, whether they refer to problems arising within the same organizations involved in crisis management or among different agencies and organizations.

Within the same organization, the following can be mentioned:

• Ability to transfer information timely and effectively among the various members and subparts. Studies have shown that organizations relying on formal systems of communication are more likely to manage effectively crises particularly when technical disturbances in communication devices may occur (see McLennan et al. 2006).

• Level of preparation and preplanning. Regarding this particular point, a rather interesting literature exists (Lagadec 1993, 1995; Roux-Dufort 2000), depicting what works well, poorly, and not at all prepared organizations. Among other criteria, the most important is the behavior and attitude of responsible managers in facing crises, as in prepared organizations the latter tend to take the lead, whereas in the least prepared they tend to retire in their own shell and protect themselves from criticism. Equally relevant is the ability of organizations to learn from experience and to successfully interface with the public and the media.

• A specifically mentioned aspect refers to decision making, that is, the ability to make decisions (possibly sound ones) in the urgency of a disaster, under the tremendous pressure of the evolving event and the concerned public(s). Lagadec, Roux Dufort, and Weick all share the conviction that crisis management is a strategic not a reactive activity.

An example of decision which is particularly hard to make in the face of natural disasters is early warning in case of large uncertainties (see Early Warning Systems ). Specific examples are in the field of seismic risk, where early signals may be particularly difficult to interpret correctly and, in any case, leave large room for false alarm (see Earthquake Prediction and Forecasting ). Even though other hazards, like volcanic eruptions or floods, are in general more predictable than earthquakes, they all share some basic common aspects, like the sources of uncertainty, deriving from the quality of available data, the quality of scientific explanations and models. Other types of uncertainty intertwined with the latter refer to the societal and institutional backgrounds where the decision must be taken. As Sarewitz et al. (2000) convincingly showed, sometimes improvement in scientific understanding of a given natural phenomenon may even lead to larger and deeper uncertainties. Instead, the latter may be reduced by means of strong and sound decision making rather than better science or better data.

Larger difficulties arise when multiple organizations intervene in the same crisis scene:

• Communication among different organizations which does not only imply issues of language, jargon, secrecy, willing to keep information inside each organization, but also technical aspects, for example, different radio frequencies assigned to every agency and organization, a simple fact holding heavy consequences.

• Communication with the media, when multiple actors are in theory eligible to provide information. How to agree among the police, firemen, medical doctors, etc., about the opportunity to dispatch a unique information bulletin, particularly when stakes are high and uncertainty large?

• Need to share not only material resources but also the information about the actual availability of those resources and the way to obtain them from legitimate owners. Even though the civil protection is entitled to ask for resources, conflicts among ministries and governmental agencies must be avoided; furthermore knowledge about existing resources must preexist if they are to be practically managed during the crisis.

A final word in this section must be devoted to the so-called lay or general public. Some of the latter may actually be part of the population who may be potential victim of the disaster. Social scientists have been producing thousands pages of studies describing and reasoning about the response of “people” to disasters under different circumstances and in different contexts (just as a reference, Barton 1970; Drabek 1986; Fischer 1996). Time has come to make those studies part of active crisis management, avoiding treating the public as pure recipients of somebody else’s thoughts and decisions, recognizing the essential active role that the affected population actually plays in the majority of cases. Attempts to elude this reality have often turn crisis management into failure even in the presence of substantial means and well-prepared organizations. In this respect, the issue of informing the population before and during crises is clearly crucial. As Parker (1999) stated, there is often a contradiction between the requirement to keep it secret, in the fear of “panic,” and the need to have the public act in an informed way (see Risk Perception and Communication ). Considering again the example of early warning, Parker and Handmer (1998) have shown how any information, advice, or input from official sources undergoes a process of verification and analysis of costs and benefits implied in the suggested or required actions. The decision to comply with the latter depends, among other factors, on the familiarity with the hazard, on the familiarity with the authority issuing the alert, on the correspondence between the given message and the perceived threat, and, last but not least, on the tone and wording of the message itself.

Inter- and intraorganizational challenges mentioned above are limited to what is already known about past crises, emerging from experience and thinking about what happened in past events.

This is just one part of the problem at stake for today’s crisis managers, the other one being future challenges, tomorrow’s problems, and constraints that are not always that easy to identify and detect in advance. Scenarios of future and emerging hazards and risks must be first depicted in order to be able to answer the just asked question of how future crises will look like (see Global Change and its Implications for Natural Disasters ).

In their book, La fin du risqué zero, Guilhou and Lagadec (2002) addressed those issues, pointing at two main concerns, referring to the emergence of surprises on the one hand and to the need to develop specific scientific expertise on the other. As for the first, the Authors hold that future crises will imply larger surprises and unexpected outcomes, the only way to be prepared for is training on scenarios and simulations, not because the future will be as drawn in the scenario, but because the latter helps those dealing with crises to prepare for the unexpected. As for the second, there is an increasing demand for scientific experts able to provide guidance on the basis of poor quality (and sometimes also quantity) data, making a guess informed by their knowledge and past experience in the field of concern (for example earthquakes or floods). This may be considered as a particular case of scientists advising policy makers (Jasanoff 1990), in a condition which is particularly stressful and delicate for both. As an example of tragic problems that may arise in the aftermath of a catastrophy one may recall the ongoing trial in Italy after the l’Aquila earthquake, in which scientists who worked as consultants for the civil protection are under trial for their failure in correctly communicating the risk and/or uncertainties implied in risk estimation and assessments capabilities (see Hall 2011).

In this contribution, little room has been devoted to technology, despite its omnipresence in all arenas of modern life, certainly in the field of emergency management. Computers, satellites, and cellular phones have changed substantially the conditions under which officers and civil protection servants are working (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 2011). The increasingly extensive use of Internet has changed also victims’ ability to get informed, to exchange feelings, problems, and sometime crucial information. Many technologies, starting from the GIS to several communication devices, have slowly shifted from military to civilian applications. In spite of such major influx of modern technologies, which certainly must be used to manage crises at best, a number of warnings must be raised, not with the aim to contradict the obvious potential of technologies, but rather to promote their most effective usage.

Quarantelli (1998) suggested for example that overreliance upon modern technologies should not divert attention from the need to provide backups, including manual backups, in case of technologies’ failure; in any case, technologies should be looked for and developed to address actual needs rather than reshape crisis management to fit the technical features of existing devices offered in the market. Finally, the rather trivial but nonetheless important reminder of the fact that problems of interpretation and meaning cannot be solved by “more technology” (nor by more science as suggested by Sarewitz et al. 2000).

Conditions for successful crisis management: lessons learnt from successful and unsuccessful cases

There are a number of conditions that are commonly considered as keys to positive outcome of crisis management, including ability to govern complex and highly dynamic contexts and situations, ability to select the crucial information in the midst of flouring data and uncontrolled rumors, and ability to anticipate on the basis of understanding of the situation and thanks to a prior effort in designing scenarios and simulations helping to identify weak points and fragilities of both the exposed environment and communities.

One of the most crucial aspects refers to the capacity to learn upon experience, to capitalize past mistakes and successful results, and to rethink strategy and form of organizations. Well-organized agencies are able to face even failures so as to learn and question basic assumptions in an effort to be much more prepared for the next occasion; unprepared organizations do not even have the tools to analyze what went wrong and lack human, technical, and financial resources to recover in a resilient way. A resilient organization in this sense is not only able to recover after a failure but also to restructure itself so as to become stronger and take advantage of the lessons learnt. This is clearly a very demanding achievement, while most organizations tend to restore pre-event patterns, aiming at surviving, keeping the attention all focused on the specific aspects of the just occurred crisis, without questioning the entire set of organizational assumptions and fundamental beliefs.

Still the problem that remains open is how temporary multiple organizations can accomplish such learning which should not be only individual but also collective, that is, related to the entire set of different agencies, private companies, groups, and organizations making part or coordinated by civil protection and contributing to the solution of a crisis for the best or for the worst.

And even more challenging is the question of how to keep the memory of such learning, of the conditions that led to positive as well as to negative outcomes. Who should be responsible for keeping such memory and what form such memory can take. It can be suggested as a partial solution that emergency plans (see Emergency Planning ) may be one of the material places where such memory can be kept, in the sense that the plan should constitute both a reminder of activities and procedures that proved to work well under given scenarios and may as well provide room for learning lessons from real events and simulations so as to revise the plan whenever the latter is being felt obsolete or requiring any kind of updating.

One unfortunate observation made by some authors (De Marchi 1996; Murphy 2009) is regarding the large amount of information, expertise, and know-how that is lost after some time has passed since the last crisis and several lessons must be learnt again and solutions found again, whereas they had already been achieved but not successfully transmitted in the past. In this regard, reports of emergencies that have been tackled in the recent past, in various developed and developing countries, are worthwhile reading and analyzing with the aim to build a reference archive at least for those problems and obstacles that arise over and over, which would deserve to become a common patrimony of all those in charge of crisis management at different stages and with varying levels of responsibility.

Summary

Civil protection is a term used in several countries to indicate the institution(s) that coordinates (or tackle) emergency and crisis management.

Crisis management is the set of activities aimed at facing a complex, unexpected situation originated by an accident, a war, a terrorist attack, or a natural calamity.

Crisis management is a particularly complex activity, which requires a number of qualities from those who are in charge of its solution. It is stated that crisis management as a definition holds an intrinsic contradiction in that crises are unmanageable by their very nature. They are characterized by a number of aspects, like difficulties in getting the right picture and extent of damage, disruption and resource needs, problems in communication at all levels, among stakeholders and with the public, rapid development, strong pressure on decision makers, and significant uncertainties about potential outcome of alternative decisions and consequent actions. Those and other features make the solution of crises particularly troublesome and questioning fundamental beliefs and procedures of the established organizations which are expected to deal with them effectively. Those organizations are generally grouped under the label of civil protection. The latter term may either refer to an individual organization which is in charge of coordinating the activity of the many others who intervene on the scene of a disaster or to the entire set of organizations entering in a disaster field. In both cases, crisis management often implies the establishment of a complex temporary multiorganization, comprising a variety of different agencies and organizations that meet on the occasion of a disaster and have to cooperate despite cultural, language, and mission differences. Findings of recent literature and deriving from practical cases are proposed to discuss what are the most agreed upon conditions that may lead to satisfactory crisis management solutions.