Introduction

The capacity of national civil protection and crisis management systems has never been challenged in such magnitude before, wherein a spectrum of issues mounts at a time from refugee crises, terrorism and disasters varying in nature. Over the last century, civil protection system grew into stronger multi-stakeholder entity that could rapidly respond to a disaster, significantly reducing the number of lives lost to disasters. Civil protection also shifted toward a more proactive and integrated approach—focusing on better preparedness and warnings to mitigate disaster risks and enhance the efficiency and speed of response. In this scenario, studies and analyses to generate new empirical evidence regarding the actual functioning of civil protection systems and crisis management across regions would add a new knowledge to the existing literature. The presented research is an attempt to trace the trajectory of crisis situations such as disasters, refugee crises and terrorist attacks in general to analyze the evolving challenges posed to civil protection systems from interdisciplinary governance perspectives.