The purpose of this work was to analyse the problems connected with the risk assessment of emergency situations in Estonia and their relations with land use planning. The research was carried out on the basis of a case study: the preliminary risk assessment of Tartu, the second largest city of Estonia, conducted by the specialists of the Estonian University of Life Sciences.The Estonian Emergency Preparedness Act designates risk assessment as an important task of crisis management, on the basis of which all of the following measures should be planned and implemented. The act specifies two types of risk assessment, functional and territorial. The first involves the ministries and their areas of government, whereas the second concerns the counties and the largest cities and communities. The methodical basis of territorial risk assessment is established by special regulation of the Minister of the Interior. The regulation requires the determination and risk assessment of 15 (or more) different types of possible emergency situations. The outcomes of the risk assessments will serve as the basis for composing crisis management plans and spatial (land use) planning, concerning county plans, comprehensive plans, detailed plans, and also specific building projects.At present, the risk assessments of all of the counties and most of the largest cities in Estonia have been performed, but the possibilities for the application of the outcomes for spatial planning remain uncertain. Our intention was to select and group the scenarios of development of emergency situation in relation with land use and spatial planning, and to draw up proposals for specific planning activities. On the basis of their relations to city area, the 15 types of possible emergency hazards were divided into five groups, which were described and analysed separately. The conclusions concerned the opportunities for taking into consideration the results of risk assessment in planning and design procedures.

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This paper presents a comparative study of city risk assessment in Estonia, as a so-called 'new member' and in the UK as an 'old member' of the EU. The comparison of the outcomes was carried out on the basis of four strategically selected risk assessments of Estonian cities and the same number of British cities. The selected indicators of comparison were legislative requirements, provision and performance, methodologies, types of analysed risks, risk assessment outcomes on a wide scale, risk assessment results, usage of risk matrixes and also publication and availability.The risk assessments in both countries were required not only on a local community level, but on regional and state levels as well. In the UK the legal requirements and anchors in methodology were in general more clearly defined, which guarantees the similarity and better compatibility of the risk assessments of different cities and parishes. For example the division of risk matrix between risk rankings is precisely determined in British methodology, however in the Estonian, different interpretations are currently allowable. British legislation also sets concrete requirements for the publication of the community risk register, but in Estonia the availability of similar material depends on the decision and good will of the local government.The final conclusion is that the territorial risk assessment methodologies of different European countries cannot be overtaken one-for-one or converted. At the same time, British risk assessment methodology and organisation can undoubtedly serve as one of the examples in the process of the further development of territorial risk assessment methodology in Estonia and maybe also for other 'new members' of the European Union, as was previously expected.

This paper presents a comparative study of the national risk assessment outcomes of two different countries of the European Union: Estonia, as a socalled 'new member' and the UK as an 'old member'. The comparative survey was carried out on the basis of the National Summary of Emergency Risk Assessments of Estonia and the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies of the UK. The features compared were requirements, methodologies, risk assessment process and performers, risk types and categories together with risk assessment outcomes as well as output documents' composition. Simultaneously parallels were drawn with local level emergency risk assessments. Although the risk types were defined diversely in the two countries, an indirect comparison was still accomplishable. For instance, the risk of pandemic human disease was assessed as one of the highest in both countries. On the grounds of our observations, the National Risk Register of the UK was comparatively more, an advising, guiding and directing document while the Estonian emergency risk assessment summaries were in a greater part of a summarizing character.