Building Safer Communities. Risk Governance, Spatial Planning and Responses to Natural Hazards is a 2009 book edited by Urbano Fra Paleo, published by IOS Press. This textbook examines the central principles of enhanced risk governance, whose implementation might help to mitigate the increasing losses caused by natural hazards. It promotes the adoption of proactive, preventive approaches in public policies, particularly through land use planning, by influencing on the occupation of hazard-prone areas.It serves both as a comprehensive introduction to the formulation and implementation at the strategic level of policies that address risk, and as an advancement in the integration of current practices, including emergency management, environmental management, community development and spatial