Funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology –2014-2017

PIs:   Prof. Deborah Shmueli, Prof. Amnon Reichman, Prof. Eli Salzberger, Prof. Gad Barzilai (University of Haifa); Prof. Eran Feitelson (Hebrew University)

Researchers: Ehud Segal, Dr. Michal Ben Gal

An important role of the modern, regulatory state is to mitigate the risks involved in large scale disasters, such as earthquakes, through legislation, regulation, and their enforcement. Such regulatory landscape is myriad and complex – institutional layers and legal norms may overlap, conflict, or leave gaps. Moreover, the regulatory power itself in modern democracies is dispersed, resulting in “innovative third-way approaches to regulation, collectively referred to as the new governance model”(Lobel,Orly. 2012. “New Governance as Regulatory Governance”, in The Oxford Handbook on Governance. David Levi-Faur (Editor). Oxford University Press, 65-82).The reality of “networked governance” and its importance for resilience-building has also been highlighted in the disaster literature.

The research identifis, maps and conceptualize Israel’s regulatory framework – norms and institutions – that directly governs earthquake preparedness, response and recovery, and then evaluate it using the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) methodology, with an emphasis on evaluating processes for public engagement which are put forth within the regulatory scheme as well as using public engagement processes in the evaluation itself. The final recommendations will identify gaps between what exists and what is desired based on the literature review and the regulatory evaluation and offer ways for strengthening the regulatory framework, thus, contributing to Israel’s preparedness on the state, community and private levels and the interaction between the three. Through the development of a typology of regulations concerning earthquakes, a much needed gap in the literature of regulation will also be addressed. The research will also contribute to the assessment of the adequacy and feasibility of the RIA methodology and primarily the various approaches to public engagement in the disasters context in Israel. The research will be carried out under the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at the University of Haifa, in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University. The principal investigators form an interdisciplinary group with expertise in law, economics, planning, public policy and geography. 

For research outcomes see:

Earthquakes Readiness Regulation in Israel – report and database (Hebrew)

Shmueli, Deborah, Segal, Ehud, Ben-Gal, Michal, Feitelson, Eran and Reichman, Amnon. “Earthquake readiness in volatile regions: the case of Israel”, Natural Hazards 98(2) 405-423. (2019)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03698-x

Shmueli, Deborah, Ben-Gal, Michal, Segal, Ehud, Reichman, Amnon and Feitelson, Eran. “How can regulatory systems be assessed? The case of earthquake preparedness in Israel”. Evaluation  25(1), 80-98. (2018) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1356389018803235