Publication: Romania - Management of Earthquake Risk
Loading...
Published
2025-09-29
ISSN
Date
2025-10-09
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Romania is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the European Union (EU). The national risk assessment (NRA, RO-RISK) identifies earthquakes as the country's top hazard, potentially affecting over half of the country. Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, with its dense population and aging building stock, is among Europe's most vulnerable urban areas. With estimated annual average losses of Euro 512 million and potential large-scale damage and long-term impact on society, Romania’s earthquake risk underscores the urgent need to assess evolving risk trends and strengthen national earthquake response capacity. Romania has made several important efforts in seismic risk management. These include developing a national strategic framework in line with international standards, reinforcing the legislative framework, updating building codes, and streamlining the institutional set-up to foster greater cooperation among key stakeholders. Building on progress and lessons learned, Romania is intensifying efforts to enhance the resilience of its built environment and communities to earthquakes while strengthening response. To further strengthen seismic risk management in Romania, opportunities exist in enhancing legal frameworks, improving coordination, updating risk assessments, strengthening public administration, developing disaster risk financing strategies, and creating a multi-hazard recovery framework integrating the ‘build back better’ (BBB) principle. Strengthening cross-sectoral coordination and accountability through clear mandates, guidance, and performance monitoring can help embed risk reduction more effectively into all relevant sectors. To address all types of infrastructure, sectoral ministries must develop specific strategies, programs, or action plans, including strategic or nationally significant infrastructures. This report offers a rapid review of earthquake risks and risk management capacity, investment needs, and recommendations to inform policy dialogue and future research. Capacity considers earthquake risk governance, risk understanding, risk reduction and mitigation, preparedness and early warning, readiness and response, recovery and post-disaster financing, and cross-cutting topics such as social resilience and the private sector. Each section reviews the current arrangements, key challenges, and opportunities for improvements relevant to Romania. The findings aim to inform national and EU decision-making and contribute to ongoing policy and investment dialogue as well as future research.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2025. Romania - Management of Earthquake Risk. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43821 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Insurance against Climate Change : Financial Disaster Risk Management and Insurance Options for Climate Change Adaptation in Bulgaria(Washington, DC, 2014)Bulgaria is exposed to nearly all types of climate extremes, including floods, droughts, and others, as well as earthquakes. The combination of insurance products, early warning systems, information campaigns, infrastructure adaptation measures, and strict regulations can be very useful in tackling the negative climate change impacts. This note provides an overview of the insurance sector s contribution to climate change - related risk prevention and highlights some of Bulgaria s ongoing disaster risk management (DRM) efforts. The note aims to raise awareness and emphasize the role that financial disaster risk management (FDRM), including insurance, can have in climate change adaptation. Based on a desk review and preliminary in-country stakeholder consultations, the note s findings are meant to motivate new thinking and serve as an engagement tool for ongoing in-country discussions, as well to help identify analytical work to be carried out in the future. Based on the preliminary review of Bulgaria s specific context, several ideas are being put forward to be further explored in the ongoing discussions toward creating FDRM products to address the major natural disasters (in particular, floods, droughts, and earthquakes) and improving adaptation to climate change. Potential areas of analysis that can be further explored and, as such, plant a seed for future action can focus on promoting risk prevention and deploying insurance instruments, including issues around traditional risk management, technology innovation, compulsory disaster insurance, forecast insurance, and disaster insurance pools. The analysis which will assess the extent of vulnerability of the subjects covered by existing insurance products, can subsequently lead to the decisions on priority insurance products to be introduced in the future.Publication The Great East Japan Earthquake--Learning from Megadisasters : Knowledge Notes, Executive Summary(Washington, DC, 2012)The Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) was the first disaster ever recorded that included an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear power plant accident, a power supply failure, and a large-scale disruption of supply chains. On March 11, 2011 earthquake of magnitude 9.0 occurred in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan's Tohoku region. The quake shook the ground as far away as western Japan and lasted for several minutes. A half hour later, a tsunami of unprecedented force broke over 650 kilometers of coastline, toppling sea walls and other defenses, flooding more than 500 km of land, and washing away entire towns and villages. This learning from Megadisasters, a knowledge sharing project is sponsored by the Government of Japan and the World Bank. The successes of Japan's Disaster Risk Management (DRM) system, as well as the ways in which that system could be improved, are reflected in the lessons drawn from the GEJE and presented in the initial reports from the Learning from megadisasters project: extreme disasters underscore the need for a holistic approach to DRM, preventive Investments pay, but be prepared for the unexpected, learning from disaster is key, as Japan has shown for the past 2,000 years, DRM is everyone's business, assessing risks and communicating them clearly and widely helps citizens make timely decisions to protect themselves, hazard maps can give the public a false sense of safety, if not properly communicated, Better management of information and communication is crucial in emergencies and recovery operations, coordination mechanisms must be developed and tested in normal times, so that they are ready for use in an emergency, and vulnerable groups must be protected and engaged.Publication Why Do People Die in Earthquakes? The Costs, Benefits and Institutions of Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries(2009-01-01)Every year, around 60,000 people die worldwide in natural disasters. The majority of the deaths are caused by building collapse in earthquakes, and the great majority occurs in the developing world. This is despite the fact that engineering solutions exist that can almost completely eliminate the risk of such deaths. Why is this? The engineering solutions are both expensive and technically demanding, so that the benefit-cost ratio of such solutions is often unfavorable compared with other interventions designed to save lives in developing countries. Nonetheless, a range of public disaster risk-reduction interventions (including construction activities) are highly cost effective. The fact that such interventions often remain unimplemented or ineffectively executed points to a role for issues of political economy. Building regulations in developing countries appear to have limited impact in many cases, perhaps because of limited capacity and the impact of corruption. Public construction is often of low quality - perhaps for similar reasons. This suggests approaches that emphasize simple and limited disaster risk regulation covering only the most at-risk structures and that (preferably) can be monitored by non-experts. It also suggests a range of transparency and oversight mechanisms for public construction projects.Publication A Workshop on Disaster Risk Reduction and Risk Transfer : Toward Concrete Action in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific(Washington, DC, 2008-05)This is a summary report of the South Asia Region and the East Asia Pacific regions training workshop from April 28-30, 2008 on the importance of disaster risk reduction and risk transfer including major concepts, models, and various applications of disaster risk reduction around the globe. This report represents an analysis and summary of the main presentations made during the course of the workshop. It provides a comprehensive assessment of the major points of discussion and an overview of the salient issues that emerged during the event. Specific policy recommendations are also outlined here which will serve as an important instrument for relevant Bank projects and client governments facing issues of how to mainstream disaster risk reduction practices into development initiatives.Publication GDLN Seminar on Strengthening Disaster Risk Management in East Asia and the Pacific : Volume 1 . Post‐disaster recovery procedures of the Great Hanshin (Kobe earthquake) earthquake and the Great Sumatra‐Andaman earthquake(Washington, DC, 2008-12)In the GLDN seminar, the recovery procedures in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake and the Asian tsunami were discussed. This introduction to Catastrophe Risk Financing Frameworks seminar provided participants with an understanding of catastrophe risk financing frameworks. In addition, it informed participants of new product lines in risk mitigation and risk finance and transfer and shared experiences of Bank-financed projects, including Turkey's Catastrophic Insurance Pool.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Thailand Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-01)The Thailand Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) identifies ways in which Thailand can achieve economic development that is greener and more climate resilient. Despite several decades of development success, Thailand’s aspirations to become a high-income economy are facing headwinds: investment growth has slowed, structural transformation out of agriculture and into higher value-added activities has stalled, rising global protectionism poses threats to exports, and the population is aging rapidly. Incomes and wealth are concentrated in Bangkok, while other parts of the country struggle to develop. Climate change is reinforcing and exacerbating these challenges. Urban flooding risks are among the highest in the world and Bangkok – which hosts a concentration of Thailand’s export-oriented industries – remains especially vulnerable. The relatively poor north and north-eastern parts of Thailand are vulnerable to drought, water shortages, and changing rainfall patterns, which will continue to impact agricultural production, exacerbating existing inequalities. Heat waves and prolonged heat exposure directly impact labor productivity and well-being, as well as increasing risks of illness.Publication South Asia Development Update, October 2025: Jobs, AI, and Trade(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-07)Growth in South Asia is on track to exceed earlier expectations and reach 6.6 percent in 2025, but is expected to slow to 5.8 percent in 2026. While this short-term outlook is subject to downside risks, over the longer term, artificial intelligence (AI) could promote growth by boosting productivity especially among those 15 percent of South Asian workers who are in jobs where AI strongly complements human labor. Such a growth dividend could be amplified by trade reforms. Carefully sequenced tariff cuts, especially in conjunction with broader free trade agreements, would encourage private investment and job creation in trade-related activities, which disproportionately employ South Asia’s younger and higher-skilled workers and have accounted for most of South Asia’s employment growth over the past decade. This could particularly benefit manufacturing, where elevated tariffs on production inputs currently diminish competitiveness. South Asia’s governments can support the adjustment of labor markets to new technologies and trade opportunities by proactively removing obstacles to workers’ reallocation to new firms, occupations, and locations. Simultaneously, they could protect vulnerable workers during this period of change by streamlining and strengthening safety nets.Publication World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2025: Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-07)GDP growth in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region remains above the global average but is projected to slow down in 2025 and even further in 2026. The sluggishness is due to a less favorable external environment—rising trade restrictions, easing but still elevated global uncertainty, and slowing global growth—as well as persistent domestic difficulties. Today, many people are in low-productivity or informal jobs, and many of the young cannot find any jobs. The class of people vulnerable to falling into poverty is now larger than the middle class in most countries. In a region that thrived because export-oriented, labor-intensive growth created more productive jobs, firms must deal with higher tariffs and workers must contend with the growing use of robots, AI and digital platforms. More productive jobs would be created by reforms to enhance economic opportunity, human capacity and their virtuous interplay.Publication Keys to Energy-Efficient Shipping(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-21)This report quantifies the extent to which energy efficiency measures can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fuel costs in global shipping. Drawing on a fleet-wide analysis across key vessel segments (bulk carriers, container ships, and tankers), it assesses the untapped potential of technical and operational efficiency measures through to 2050. Findings show that maximizing energy efficiency can cut global shipping’s GHG emissions by up to about 40% by 2030, exceeding current IMO interim targets, while simultaneously lowering the costs of the energy transition. Roughly half of these potential GHG savings by 2030 pay for themselves, offering savings of up to $220 billion annually in total costs as green fuel supply chains develop, and helping to build resiliency against fuel price volatility and rerouting shocks. The report highlights the role of short-term operational measures (such as forms of port call and speed optimization) and medium-term technical innovations (for example, wind-assisted propulsion) in achieving substantial efficiency gains. It identifies persistent economic, behavioral, and organizational barriers to uptake and illustrates them through deep dives on port call optimization and wind-assisted propulsion, showcasing innovative industry initiatives being applied to overcome these barriers. Finally, the report offers targeted recommendations for policymakers, industry, ports, and financiers to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency solutions at scale.Publication Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2025: Jobs and Prosperity(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-07)Economic growth in Europe and Central Asia eased to 2.4 percent in 2025, reflecting a sharp slowdown in the Russian Federation. Outside Russia, growth momentum remains broadly resilient, supported by private consumption, infrastructure spending, and a gradual recovery in trade. While a modest pickup is expected in 2026–27, growth is likely to remain well below the 2000–19 average. In this slow-growth environment, downside risks dominate, with the potential for setbacks in reforms posing a significant threat to investor confidence, private sector dynamism, and job creation. The region's labor market shows signs of resilience but faces deep-rooted structural challenges. Since the start of transition from planned to market in the early 1990s, employment has grown faster than the region's population, driven by rising labor force participation and a shift out of agriculture. Yet most new jobs are in low-productivity services, and productivity growth has stalled. Demographic pressures — aging, shrinking workforces, and emigration —add to the strain. Structural bottlenecks, including weak competition, limited access to finance, and outdated skills systems, constrain firm growth and innovation. The report calls for a three-pillar reform agenda: invest in foundational infrastructure for jobs, strengthen the business environment, and mobilize private capital. Targeting five priority sectors—manufacturing, agribusiness, tourism, healthcare, and energy—can help turn growth into better jobs and shared prosperity.