Dealing with natural hazards
There is no absolute protection against natural hazards. Experience from past natural events has shown that natural hazards must be dealt with in a holistic and sustainable manner. The aim of all measures is to reduce existing risks to an acceptable level and to prevent new, unacceptable risks. Protection against natural hazards is a joint task.
The main objective of the Confederation in dealing with natural hazards is to largely eliminate the protection deficits in the area of natural and accident risks by 2030 and to adapt settlements and infrastructures as well as their use to the natural hazard situation. This goal is to be achieved with an integrated risk management system in order to create and maintain sustainable and comparable safety for people, high material assets and the natural basis of life throughout Switzerland in the long term.
Integral risk management
The objectives in dealing with natural hazards can only be achieved if specialist agencies, authorities, insurance companies and those affected work together to implement integral risk management, because protection against natural hazards is a permanent and joint task. In this context, the various responsible parties fulfil different tasks:
Regulated distribution of tasks
The tasks of the public sector are assigned as follows: In Switzerland, the municipalities and cantons are primarily responsible for protection against natural hazards. The Confederation assumes its strategic leadership role and supports the cantons financially and technically. The Federal Office for the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (FOEN), or the Hazard Prevention Division, supervises the cantonal enforcement of the Hydraulic Engineering and Forestry Act and carries out the tasks directly assigned to it by the Act. In particular, it supports the cantons in the planning and implementation of protective measures against water and landslides, landslides and avalanches, and in the preparation of hazard documentation. In the area of earthquakes, the focus is on coordinating federal measures for earthquake prevention, ensuring earthquake-resistant construction in the federal sphere of influence and promoting the implementation of preventive measures by third parties (cantons, municipalities, private individuals).
Other important tasks for protection against natural hazards are assumed by the insurance companies in accordance with their legal mandate and by those directly affected by the risk, such as homeowners or infrastructure operators, through the exercise of their personal responsibility.
