Trends and Breakthrough Pathways in Natural Disaster Mitigation and Management System of China

To address critical challenges in China’s disaster risk mitigation，such as the increasing frequency of natural disasters，vulnerability of high-risk entities，and inadequate disaster prevention resilience，this study systematically investigated the pathways for establishing an integrated natural disaster risk mitigation and management framework. Grounded in the coordinated management requirements of the “human-disaster-earth” paradigm，we propose a comprehensive framework encompassing three interconnected pillars：theoretical，technical，and national systems. The theoretical system delineates foundational paradigms for risk mitigation across the entire life cycle of natural disasters，including multi-stakeholder participation，and synergistic resilience enhancement in the co-development of production-living-ecological spaces，thereby distinguishing risk governance （as an overarching multi-actor coordination） from targeted risk reduction （focused on operational adjustments）. The technical system incorporates pivotal innovations，including territorial resilient spatial planning for risk mitigation （emphasizing impact alleviation through engineering measures），community-based risk reduction and preparation （integrating risk reduction strategies to minimize exposure and vulnerability），and extraction of crowd behavioral response features during imminent disasters. The national system，on the other hand，establishes institutional architectures that comprise legal and regulatory frameworks for risk governance，as well as cross-domain，cross-hierarchical，and cross-departmental linkage mechanisms for risk mitigation. Additionally，it includes intelligent urban-rural disaster management systems to facilitate adaptive risk governance. Furthermore，this research identifies key scientific challenges，including multi-scale risk transmission mechanisms across hierarchical levels，evolutionary patterns of dynamic vulnerability in hazard-bearing entities，and interest-balancing mechanisms in multi-stakeholder collaborative governance to differentiate risk mitigation （specific hazard dampening） from broader risk reduction （holistic vulnerability diminishment）. It also outlines breakthrough pathways，such as complex network modeling of risk cascades，intelligent optimization of collaborative resilience，design of evolutionary game-theoretic mechanisms for synergistic coordination，and disaster mitigation innovations based on community-based approaches. Ultimately，these findings could potentially help inform theoretical and practical approaches for developing a modernized，comprehensive and collaborative disaster risk management system that bridges risk governance with operational risk control and mitigation strategies.