Hot spots for risk-based planning in Greece - the cases of floods and forest fires

Recent flood and forest fire disasters in Greece highlight the local spatial development history and territorial vulnerability as principal causes. However, despite the strong spatial aspects of disaster risk, disaster management rarely finds its way into spatial planning. The article attempts to locate high disaster risk areas (hot-spots) in Greece and activate risk-based planning. The approach combines theoretical assumptions on the spatial dimension of disaster risk; macro-scale hazard zoning at the national-regional level through past disaster event mapping; meso-scale territorial vulnerability analysis to delimit disaster risk hot-spots; and discussion on statutory planning tools and scales of intervention for risk mitigation.