Civil risk manager at European level

The purpose of this paper is to propose a standard process for training and certification to identify at European level a civil risk manager, with a common background. An analysis of possible training and education activities in emergency planning at an international level is shown. Among preparedness activities, in this paper we consider activities that contribute to reducing the exposure risk components. The dangerous goods transportation risk is considered as a reference case, analyzing standard training and the certification process introduced by the United Nations and adopted at an international level. The experiences of the USA, the EU and Italy, in the context of civil risk training, are reported. It is possible to reduce the exposure risk component implementing training activity to increase the capability of subjects involved in emergency conditions. Experiences of the USA and the EU relative to training constitute different attempts to certificate training in emergency planning. However, there is a lack of international standards to certificate a professional expert that can manage disaster in a standard way. It is possible to introduce training and certification for an EU civil risk manager adopting the United Nations’ model concerning dangerous goods transportation. In this paper, the necessity to implement training activities at different levels to reduce risk is highlighted. A possible trend of a risk level function depending on training activities’ implementation at the time is proposed. However, in further studies, the function could be specified and calibrated referring to a model and specific surveys. This study, in the context of analysis related to the standardization process in emergency planning, is the first proposal, to the authors’ knowledge, into the introduction of standard vocational training and an international certification process for civil risk managers.