Towards a multi-risk framework for enhancing emergency preparedness in ccross-border areas: ongoing development in the BORIS2 project

Emergency planning in urban contexts should be based on a preventive evaluation of potential impacts with attention to the most vulnerable areas, multi-risk scenarios and the post-event performance assessment of key infrastructure essential for emergency response operations. Such planning is particularly relevant in cross-border areas, where coordinated preparedness and prevention efforts require harmonized methodologies across different institutional frameworks, legal systems and infrastructural capacities. This paper addresses the outlined challenge by proposing a practical and operational framework for managing seismic, flood and compound risk in cross-border settings, which is currently under development within the BORIS2 project (Cross-border risk assessment for increased prevention and preparedness in Europe: way forward, UPCM-KAPP-PV-2023 program). The proposed framework is structured in a four-step methodology that enables the complete assessment of scenario-based consequences at the affected urban environment and the corresponding performance of the Emergency Management System (EMS) at the municipal scale. The risk-assessment and loss-estimation is performed to evaluate the consequences of single (earthquake or flood) and compound events. These analyses focus on the impacts on residential buildings and population, as well as on the functionality checks of critical buildings essential for emergency response (such as hospitals, fire stations, and emergency shelters). The methodology may be realized by multiple scenarios to support risk-based decision-making also allowing the identification of the most relevant hazard scenarios. The proposed four-step methodology has some limitations. However, once fully developed and tested, it will provide insight into the performance of the EMS under the considered scenario, effectively supporting emergency preparedness.