Natural Disasters and Societal Safety

12 ROY H. GABRIELSEN

lack resources to cope with the new situation of enhanced risk, and this may cause

societal unrest and population migration. Hence, also advanced and rich societies

like ours will have to cope with living with both direct and indirect increased risks

of natural disasters. Protection against such disasters has three basic elements: First,

knowledge about the underlying natural processes of the geology, the atmosphere,

the hydrology and the biological systems is paramount. Secondly, a resilient system

of warning and plans for adequate actions must exist. And thirdly, a system for

detecting, monitoring and analysing natural hazard events demands long-term,

reliable and verifiable databases both on national and international scales. This

should be an indisputable responsibility of society. In Norway much of this

responsibility rests on a few central research institute organisations. Examples are

the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI),

the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), the Norwegian Institute for Nature

Research (NINA) and the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA). The

databases and competence of these institutions should be given optimal utilisation

by the Norwegian universities and be communicated effectively to the political and

administration networks. Indeed, it is the main intention of the present seminar to

support such communication. Without it and a long-term and stable capacity in the

research institutions, the capacity for natural hazard mitigation will not be available

to the future Norwegian society.

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