Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and volcanic activities has had devastating effects on human life. Risk is the probability of harmful consequences from the interaction of hazards and vulnerable conditions. With increasing numbers of people living in crowded cities and other vulnerable areas, it is more important than ever to advance our understanding of natural disasters and the ways in which humans respond to them. My interdisciplinary study reflected in my thesis includes integrated research on the risk assessment methods for natural hazards with focus on earthquake disasters. This thesis address firstly the development of a scaled risk assessment framework, comparative assessment of natural hazard losses, including respective case studies and global overview of natural hazard risk, and secondly a comparative risk assessment of geological disasters to elaborate the major disastrous hazards for global population. Furthermore, I evaluate the effect of past events in form of the number of losses with respect to the exposed population on the proneness of people to the disaster. I summarize acceptable risk criteria and the necessity of having a normalized framework for societal risk assessment. I evaluate the natural hazard risk assessment and acceptable risk criteria of 32 European countries. I also introduce the concept of resistance in both risk equation and in FN-curves. Resistance is the societal resilience of a society to the occurrence of a natural disaster. Moreover, using components of FN-curves (slopes and intercepts) for risk assessment of geological disasters based on real data, I showed that the world has been more at risk of earthquakes than tsunamis, volcanic activities and landslides since 1600. Also. based on the earthquake disasters data (1973-2010), I evaluated the temporal trend of hazard, risk, exposure and resistance of the world towards earthquake disasters. Our results does not provide any evidence of increase or decrease in the temporal trend of fatality rate and earthquake resistance while there is a significant decrease in the crude death rate. Finally, we evaluated the reliability of earthquake disaster system during 1950-2012 using probability of more than 1000 fatalities as probability of failure. Our yearly estimate of reliability at the beginning of each mission year shows that the avreage reliability of earthquake disaster system is very low (~0.3) and it is decreasing over time, too.

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This compilation thesis investigates risk and safety management at the Swedish local governmentallevel. It sets special focus on municipal implementation of overall international and nationalstrategies and objectives regarding holistic, cross-sectorial and multi-strategic risk and safetywork, and the prevention of accidents and injuries. The overall aim for this thesis have been to empirically map and provide an overview of theadministrative structures for, and the prevailing management perspectives applied in the societalrisk and safety management in Sweden, as well as to study the diffusion of strategic intentions forthis area down to the municipal level. Three different sources constitute the thesis empirical base: two different set of official planningdocuments, written by Swedish municipal officials on commission of the local politiciansand one set of data from a survey investigation with municipal officials representing differentdepartments/functions. The documents were investigated using content analysis, while datafrom the survey were analyzed using statistical measures. This thesis provides through its empirical works an outlook on the general characteristics andarchetypical features of the Swedish local level’s administrative structures and managementperspective on risk and safety management; and proposes a municipal typology and a set of valuecharacters for allocation and institutionalization of risk and safety-tasks. This thesis also suggestsa conceptual framework for overviewing risk and safety management’s systemic steering elementsin its framework report. Based on the findings made, it seems as if the local level’s compliance tothe strategic level’s ambitions for the risk and safety area is hindered by practical implementationdifficulties and that much work remains in order to reach stated strategic objectives regardingholistic, inter-sectorial and multi-strategic management approaches, and preventive risk andsafety work. / Baksidestext The compilation thesis investigates Societal Risk and Safety Management (SRSM) at the Swedish local governmental level. It sets special focus on municipal implementation of overall international and national strategies and objectives regarding holistic, cross-sectorial and multi-strategic risk and safety work, and prevention of accidents/injuries and promotion of safety. Three different sources constitute the thesis empirical bases: two different sets of official governmental planning documents, written by Swedish municipal officials on commission of the local politicians and one set of data from a survey investigation with municipal officials (n=1283), representing different administrative departments/functions within different municipalities. The official documents were investigated using content analysis methodology, while data from the survey were analyzed using various statistical investigations. This thesis suggests a conceptual and systemic model for SRSM’s contextual and analytical elements, and provides through its empirical works an overview of management perspectives and administrative structures applied, and it proposes a municipal typology and a set of value characters for allocation and institutionalization of SRSM-tasks locally.