Multi-risk Analyses and Land-use Planning Process: Towards a Better Integration.

Multi-risk prevention and mitigation, even with respect to existing settlements, should be, in theory, one of the main goals of land-use planning, both at regional and urban scale. The necessity of a multi-risk approach in land-use planning is mainly due to the spreading of the sustainability concept, which has led regional and urban planning to focus more and more on the physical integrity of human and natural resources, and has been highlighted by international documents in order to achieve a real safety of settlements. Nevertheless, at present, planning tools are mainly focused on the definition of compatibility between new settlements and hazard features of the land, while just few planning tools set up multi-risk analyses with respect to existing settlements focusing on single hazard. With reference to the Italian context, the paper provides a view of recent planning tools dealing with multi-hazard and multi-risk both at regional and urban scale, highlighting their strengts and weaknesses. In detail, it is possible to state that even though the plans provide a knowledge framework of hazard and risk distribution, there is a gap between these analyses and the definition of the planning choices. Moreover, while in-depth surveys of hazards both at regional and urban scale are generally used to verify the compatibility among land-use planning choices and the different hazards which the settlement is prone to, only few advanced planning tools provide multi-risk analyses to support the planning choices in order to reduce exposure and vulnerability of the existing settlements. Starting from the analysis of these experiences, the paper provides same suggestions (directions) to fill the gap between multi-risk knowledge and definition of planning choices both at regional and urban scale, highlighting how these analyses could be integrated into decision supporting tools aimed at steering and/or checking the land-use planning choices not only for land-use transformations (new settlements and infrastructures), but also for the redefinition of the actual land-use with reduction of exposure and vulnerability of the existing settlements.