Improving civil protection in the Canton of Zurich

Despite various conceivable disasters and states of emergency, the Canton of Zurich has lacked a comprehensive and continuous procedure for evaluating and responding to risks in the context of meeting its civil-protection obligations.

A risk-management program for civil protection has now been introduced to better prepare the canton for a comprehensive range of conceivable disasters and states of emergency. Playing a key role in the program’s development, EBP provided conceptual, methodological and substantive support to the civil protection department of the cantonal police when it came answering the following questions:

• What conceivable disasters and states of emergency are relevant to civil protection in the Canton of Zurich?
• Which of these disasters and states of emergency pose the greatest risk to the population and its livelihood?
• Is there any potential for optimizing the existing measures designed to prevent and mitigate risks? If so, what measures are suitable for improving the existing civil-protection system?
• What would an effective process of continuous risk management look like?

Our approach to providing the answers to the above-mentioned questions was oriented on the KATAPLAN Guidelines issued by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Protection.

The resulting plan for dealing with the relevant disasters and states of emergency in the Canton of Zurich calls for the continuous evaluation of the identified risks, and the evaluation and implementation of specific measures developed to deal with these risks.