Risk Assessments of Natural Hazards in Refugee Camp Planning in Greece. Challenges and Recommended Actions.

Sammanfattning: The rapid increase of asylum-seekers in 2015 overwhelmed the Greek reception system and led to the creation of numerous refugee camps throughout the country. The Sphere Minimum Standards provide globally acknowledged guidance to design and manage these facilities. They designate risk assessments as an essential tool to guarantee a safe environment for Persons of Concern. Yet, exposure to natural hazards is a prevalent issue in Greek refugee camps, and living conditions are widely criticized as precarious. No academic research previously explored how risks from natural hazards are assessed or managed in refugee camps in Greece, highlighting a major research gap, specifically in the field of disaster risk management. After confirming the existence of risk assessments in two case study sites, the thesis investigates which challenges impede the assessment process and identifies potential pathways to address them. An inductive research strategy is applied that uses a qualitative case study approach and triangulates semi-structured interviews with a literature scoping. The identified challenges are grouped into eight categories: awareness, political attitude, time, capacities, inflexibility, funding, lack of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and information management. Five potential pathways are recommended to address these challenges: a Risk Management Focal Point, capacity development, flexible funding, SOPs, and information sharing mechanisms. The thesis highlights that power structures are the fundamental root cause shaping all aspects of humanitarian response operations in Greek refugee camps, and that efforts to address the identified challenges need to go beyond the operational level, short-term objectives, and fragmented modus operandi of all stakeholders involved in camp management. The thesis concludes with suggestions for future research for which it may act as a starting point.