Introduction

The previous chapters covered five different countries (Japan, Indonesia, the US, Slovakia and Germany) and addressed a manifold of spatially relevant risks that are attributable to disasters in the past. The foci of the chapter contents include earthquakes and tsunamis (Japan and Indonesia), hurricanes (USA) and river floods (Slovakia and Germany). Additionally considered are major-accident hazards that can potentially be caused by natural hazards. This chapter will give an overview of the legal frameworks of the five countries and point out similarities and differences between them, as well as important learning points.

Legal framework and instruments

In Part A, a great deal of information can be learned about the efforts of countries to address disaster risks with various spatial planning instruments. Within the present chapter, a short overview concerning the most important legal facts that set the frame for spatial planning and disaster risk management in the five countries will be given.

As Table 10 shows, all of the five countries have a legal basis for disaster risk assessment and management. Furthermore, in four of the addressed countries (namely, Japan, Indonesia, Slovakia and Germany), legally defined coordination mechanisms between disaster risk management and spatial planning exist. The only exception to this is the US, mainly because its strict federal structure transfers the legislation for spatial planning to its 50 states. This does not necessarily mean that, on the ground, no coordination between hazard mitigation planning and local land-use planning takes place. However, the establishment of a coordination mechanism is up to the individual states and depends on the existence of both the mitigation plan and the land-use plan as neither of them are legally required nationwide.

Table 10 provides a brief glimpse into the legal bases and relates to existing instruments for disaster risk assessment and management, as well as spatial planning. For reference purposes, the hazards addressed in the Part A chapters are listed. This does not include the full range of hazards experienced within these countries; however, it at least establishes what kinds of hazards the legal framework attempts to address. For a more detailed comparative analysis of these frameworks, the reader is encouraged to see Chapter B1 in Part B of this volume. A summary statement for each country is provided in Box 1.