1st Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 1CroCEE 2021

The fundamental purpose of successful disaster risk reduction is the integration of risk aware decision making in every phase of disaster risk management and in all national development programmes. Croatian disaster risk governance is fragmented between sectors and local and national government. Risk governance and emergency management are wrongly viewed as one and the same – emergency management. To be effective, risk aware decisions have to be based on scientific facts which is only sporadically the case in Croatia.
Having systematic and affective risk governance is what the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Action advocates for through the establishment and strengthening of national platforms while the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is stressing the pivotal role of science and technology in risk governance. Following this guidance, a national disaster risk reduction platform aspires to be a mechanism that provides opportunities for stakeholders to share their knowledge and to create knowledge-based policies. Although established in 2009 the Croatian National Platform never achieved its full potential. For a short period in its lifespan the Platform was an extremely active focal point, producing documents such as national risk assessments and risk management capability assessments and organising the only disaster risk reduction focused conference in Croatia. Initiating collaboration between the government and the scientific sector resulted in several joint activities such as EU CP projects, the post event assessments during 2018 Hrvatska Kostajnica landslide or the initial damage assessment after the 2020 Zagreb earthquake. At the moment, Croatia is in the process of creating the first national disaster risk management strategy based on the national risk assessment. The Strategy should serve as a starting point for new generation, systematic risk governance based on knowledge and risk informed and sustainable decision making - a strengthened national platform is THE tool to achieve this.