Comparing International Emergency Management Operations
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French Emergency Management
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The United Kingdom’s neighbor across the English Channel, France has a slightly different approach to emergency management. France’s emergency management system is based almost entirely on systematic risk assessment and the risk management policies, which are created subsequent to the risk assessments. France’s current management policies evolved mostly through zoning, environmental, and industrial safety directives common to many European Union (EU) nations.
Among EU nations, France is the leading country with regard to actively creating and enforcing hazard risk management policies. In France, the emergency management system today is based on the notion that overall effectiveness is based on buy-in from the public and requires the review of social, economic, and environmental risk acceptability by the public. This is achieved through examining fatalities and property damage subsequent to each damaging event. In addition, the French actively incorporate lessons from successes and the failures into improving policies and procedures. Ideally, in the French emergency management system, risks are managed as complex risks, or as a system-wide (holistic) risks, instead of being managed individually. However, this is dependent on the nature of the risk.
In France, effective risk management depends on several variables, which include the following:
• Information devices • Measures of risk acceptability • Anticipation of citizen reactions to disaster responses • A thorough inventory of all available financial and technical resources
Therefore, much like their counterparts in the United States and the United Kingdom, French emergency managers actively seek to
• establish functioning and comprehensive postdisaster response and recovery plans;
• develop alert procedures and systems as well as forecast systems; • educate the public about risks and about disaster management; and • reduce risk through input in zoning and construction decisions.
