Standardization of disaster risk management - Challenges and opportunities

This chapter discusses the question of whether increasing the level of standardization in a disaster risk management system will increase its effectiveness. Based on the results from several studies conducted in the context of the Swedish disaster risk management system, the authors argue that there are both positive and negative effects of increased standardization. More precisely, studies based on experiments indicate that increasing the extent of standardization of risk descriptions will probably facilitate the work of combining several sources of information in a risk assessment. But a study based on interviews and document reviews indicates that increasing the level of standardization might also lead to a reduction of motivation to conduct risk assessments. Thus, although increasing the level of standardization in a disaster risk management context might be an opportunity to facilitate the work of assessing risk, it might also result in new challenges.