The National Risk Assessment in the Netherlands: understanding risk for adequate capability planning

Disasters and crises may cause large disruption of the functioning of our society potentially affecting health and welfare, nature and environment, economy, the financial system, critical infrastructure, the government system,... [ view full abstract ]

Disasters and crises may cause large disruption of the functioning of our society potentially affecting health and welfare, nature and environment, economy, the financial system, critical infrastructure, the government system, societal values, and cultural heritage. In order to prevent disasters or minimize disruptive effects when they occur, the Netherlands apply an All Hazard National Safety and Security Strategy.
Potential risks, threats and hazards varying from floods and infection diseases (natural hazards) and hazards caused by technical failure to radicalization, terrorism cyber threats, and organized crime (malicious threats), are analyzed using a methodology called the National Risk Assessment (NRA). In this methodology threats and hazards are assessed in terms of likelihood and impact using a uniform scoring method and are therefore rendered comparable. The impact criteria reflect all the essential interests of our society: health, safety and security, ecology, economy, culture, critical infrastructure and social and political stability.
On the basis of the NRA, a capability analysis is performed to assess whether the country (government, private sector and civilians) has sufficient capabilities to adequately deal with the risks and threats, and to determine which capabilities should be strengthened or developed. Capabilities can e.g. be technical measures, well trained first responders, skills, protection of critical infrastructure as well as legislation, resilience of civil society, and risk awareness.
Assessment of the societal and psychological impact of different types of hazards and threats is one of the main problems in the risk and capability analysis. It is well known that there are considerable differences amongst experts, policy makers, civilians, societal communities and other stakeholders in knowledge, experience and the perception of various risks. But how will society and individuals react in practice on ‘high impact – low probability’ disasters such as a big flood, a nuclear disaster, a pandemic, a large and long lasting failure of the electricity supply or a severe terroristic attack using chemical warfare agents. Better insight and understanding of the perception, uncertainties, human manageability and expected behavior regarding different types of disasters and threats is a prerequisite to adequately prepare our society (government, emergency response services, public and private sector) as well as to determine effective communication strategies regarding preparation and response.
In this presentation, these issues are evaluated and different evidence based options for improvement of our National Security Strategy are discussed.