Natural disasters and criminal liability: a volume bringing together science, civil protection and law

When a disaster strikes, the questions almost always come before the answers. Faced with a landslide, a flood or a storm causing casualties and damage, public debate quickly turns to the search for responsibility. Who should have foreseen it? Who should have made a decision? Who should have acted?

In a context marked by the accelerating impacts of climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, these questions are becoming ever more pressing, directly affecting the worlds of civil protection, scientific research and public institutions.

It is from this reflection that the volume Natural Disasters and Legal Responsibility. Climate Change, Social Resilience and Just Culture edited by Francesco D'Alessandro, Maurizio Catino, Luca Ferraris and Marco Pelissero, was born. Published by Giappichelli, the book was presented on 15 June 2026 at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan during the conference Natural Disasters Between Science, Organisation and Law.

The volume is the result of more than two years of interdisciplinary research devoted to one of the most complex and timely issues in natural risk management: the relationship between accountability, decision-making and resilience. A topic that involves not only law, but also Earth sciences, engineering, organisational sociology, risk communication and public policy.

Among the contributors are Marco Altamura, Programme Director at CIMA Research Foundation, and researcher Luca Molini, who contributed to the project by bringing together legal and scientific expertise developed through the study of early warning systems, extreme-event forecasting and risk management.

A volume to understand the challenges of risk management in the climate era

The starting point of the volume is an increasingly evident reality: climate change is profoundly reshaping the risk landscape faced by contemporary societies. The growing occurrence of extreme weather events places additional pressure on civil protection systems while simultaneously fuelling public demands to identify those responsible whenever a disaster leads to severe consequences.

The authors analyse how this growing exposure to criminal liability has progressively involved civil protection operators, technical experts, public decision-makers and scientists called upon to assess scenarios characterised by high levels of uncertainty. The book traces the evolution of this phenomenon through some of the cases that have marked recent Italian history, from the L'Aquila earthquake to the Rigopiano disaster, highlighting the difficulties of assigning individual responsibility in complex contexts where decisions, information and expertise are distributed across multiple actors and institutional levels.

Particular attention is paid to a consequence that is often overlooked but potentially highly significant: the risk that excessive reliance on criminal prosecution may encourage defensive behaviours among professionals. Within the civil protection sector, this can translate into a tendency to favour extremely precautionary scenarios, with implications for the performance of warning systems and for the relationship of trust between institutions and citizens. Research conducted over the years by CIMA Research Foundation has also helped document these effects and highlight the importance of developing decision-making models capable of balancing accountability, effectiveness and uncertainty management.

Alongside legal aspects, the volume explores issues ranging from disaster communication and media narratives of risk to the organisational dynamics that characterise emergencies and the protection of cultural heritage exposed to the impacts of the climate crisis. The result is a broad and multidisciplinary interpretation of disasters, viewed not merely as natural events but as phenomena involving complex social, institutional and cultural systems.

A dialogue between science, organisation and law

The presentation of the volume was the central focus of the conferenceNatural Disasters Between Science, Organisation and Law, organised as the concluding event of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project Climate Change, Catastrophic Events, Risk Management and Accountability: Building a Just Culture for a Disaster Resilient Society. The initiative brought together scholars from different disciplines, institutional representatives, members of the judiciary and civil protection experts to discuss the scientific, organisational and legal implications of natural risk management.

Following the institutional greetings and opening remarks by Francesco D'Alessandro, the conference was structured into two sessions focusing respectively on scientific and organisational perspectives and on regulatory and institutional implications. Luca Ferraris, Professor at the University of Genoa, President of CIMA Research Foundation and co-editor of the volume, took part in the discussion during the first session, contributing to the dialogue between scientific research and decision-making processes.

At the heart of the debate was the concept of just culture, an approach aimed at moving beyond the simple search for someone to blame and towards systems capable of learning from mistakes, continuously improving their practices and strengthening collective resilience. In a context where climate change is making situations characterised by high uncertainty increasingly common, building a culture of accountability that does not automatically equate responsibility with punishment represents a crucial challenge for the future of risk management.

The volume makes an important contribution to this discussion by fostering dialogue across disciplines and highlighting how the resilience of contemporary societies depends not only on the quality of scientific knowledge and available technological tools, but also on the ability to develop organisational and regulatory frameworks suited to the complexity of today's risks.

The volume can be downloaded free of charge here.