Landslide risk is a function of the probability of the event and its consequences. Previous research has shown that preventive measures to reduce the risk are preferred over reactive measures but, especially in developing countries, rarely undertaken. A contributing factor is the lack of evidence that preventive measures pay. This study includes a brief overview of landslide risk management in general and an investigation of the present risk management situation in Sweden based on interviews in 11 municipalities complemented with interviews in Norway. The result shows that climate change has become part of the general awareness and started to be taken into account in the municipal spatial planning. Landslide susceptibility maps and databases are useful tools in the complex spatial planning. The results indicate that the application of landslide susceptibility and risk maps as previously applied for preventive measures and spatial planning in the landslide prone area Gota alv river valley have been cost effective. Improved documentation and more active communication among different stakeholders would, however, contribute to more effective landslide management.

Crisis preparedness is of great importance to many actors in society. Maintaining crisis preparedness is an arduous task that requires frequent exercises. However, many actors have trouble accomplishing this because planning and conducting exercises are time consuming and involve high costs. Digitalization of crisis training has been suggested as a way to partly overcome these obstacles. In this paper, we present the results of a pilot study on an exercise in a digital crisis training tool. Trainees were interviewed and a content analysis was performed on the data. The analytical categories consisted of requirements for a crisis training tool, developed in our previous work. The results of the analysis show that the pace of an exercise, the number of trainees and the number of asynchronous and synchronous modules are all related to boundaries of digital crisis training. These boundaries need to be further explored.

Övning ger färdighet och det gäller inte bara i traditionell undervisning utan också vid krisledning. Krisledning kännetecknas av att medlemmarna i en krisledningsgrupp ska ansvara för sina respektive verksamhetsområden och genom snabb interaktion och samordning över verksamhetsgränserna mildra effekterna av krisen för organisationen eller samhället som helhet. Det innebär att rollmedvetenhet och kommunikationsförmåga måste tränas för den enskilde så väl som för gruppen som helhet. På gruppnivå är också samverkan och koordinering internt och externt viktigt att öva. Tidigare studier visar att organisationer är intresserade av möjligheten att öva mer via digitala verktyg (Wik et al., 2017). Inom ramen för det till och med 2021 pågående Interregprojektet CriseIT 2 utvecklar vi ett koncept för övningsstöd baserat på lärplattformar. Kapitlet beskriver genom en fallstudie hur en seminarieövning kan genomföras med stöd av lärplattformen Canvas. Data till studien har samlats in genom observationer, enkäter, storgruppsdiskussion och deltagarnas indata till Canvas. Erfarenheter från fallstudien sammanfattas i möjligheter, problem och förbättringsbehov kopplade till Canvas och övningsdesignen, och rekommendationer ges både för krisövning och för undervisning baserad på problematisering och dilemmaövningar i klassrummet.

Preventive actions can be, and are frequently, taken to reduce accidents and their consequences in different ways. The MSB funded research programme "Effects of Society's Security actions" (ESS, 2009-2013) aims to study the relationship between such actions and their effects. The program is divided into three subgroups: Frequent accidents Natural hazards (such as flooding, erosion and landslide) Chemical and landfill accidents The results presented here covers natural hazards with focus on land slides and flooding. The results are based on Swedish/Scandinavian contexts. Natural events such as erosion,flooding and land slides are common, but the number of accidents (events causing severe negative impact) is rare. Therefore, in such analysis there is limited data and other information available which can be used for example in statistical analysis of actions and their effects. Instead, the analysis must be based on other information. Therefore, the analysis may have to include aspects that only can be assessed by scenario and "what-if" analyses. In this project the main method has been interviews with officials in Swedish municipalities and national agencies in Sweden and Norway. The two levels are chosen since policies are taken on national (or international) level, while the key actionsand actors are on the municipal level. The interviews cover experiences and potential scenarios. In all municipalities, one politician and officials working with planning and rescue service have been interviewed. The study covers hazard and risk mapping, follow up of such maps, physical planning and lessons learned from previous events and activities. The final outcome of the research will be a review of what is found to be well functioning, identification of weak points and recommendations for the management of landslides, erosion and flooding. The present results indicate that hazard/risk maps are of great importance, but the knowledge about the maps and how to use them varies depending on who you ask and between municipalities. Most officials in municipalities are aware of climate change (CC) but, due to high uncertainties and since climate induced events such as natural hazards are rare, the issues are often not prioritized. Further, the results indicate that the documentation, communication and the responsibilities among different units is not always clear, having impacts on for example the knowledge transfer to new personnel. Also databases can be useful tools. The project has found that the use of such tools varies between Norway and Sweden. The aim is to identify the reasons for such deviation. The mostly mentioned suggestions of improvement in the prevention process are increased knowledge, user friendly guidance, clear organisational structure and responsibilities and nationally provided ear marked funding for preventive measures.

Education plays a key role in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and in creating resilient societies worldwide by disseminating information about risks and in improving people’s risk awareness. This, in turn, helps them to prepare, cope with and recover from possible disaster events, hence making the societies more resilient. This paper shortly presents the theoretical background and the rules of the game Riskville where the participants get to experience in a hands-on manner the connections and conflicts between urban planning, different interests and climate related risks. We conclude that Riskville promotes discussions on different perspectives on disaster risk and resilience and approaches in including them into urban planning.

Our changing climate foretells a future with continued large forest fires and extreme weather events, such as devastating storms, heavy rainfall, flooding, heat and drought. This project focuses on preparedness for this kind of events taking place while large, spread-out, and often uncertain, numbers of visitors are roaming the Swedish countryside – not seldom voluntarily or involuntarily of the grid. The conditions for crisis communication is changing with social media, apps and digitalization of information. Obstacles and possibilities for digitalization in the tourism sector in relation to the specific conditions of nature-based tourism needs more attention.

Tourists are a vulnerable group in crisis situations, since they are not acquainted with neither the place nor how to find information about the crisis and how to keep themselves safe. In parallel, the Swedish tourism sector is constantly growing, with new trends as ”vacation at home” and increasing numbers of international tourists visiting Swedish nature, and nature-based tourism is believed to see a significant increase in post-pandemic travel, as more visitors seek uncrowded destinations. A crisis can be devastating in nature tourist areas. Despite this, the tourism sector is often viewed as peripheral and is in some cases not even included in crisis preparedness planning.  

The aim of this study is to generate new knowledge and methods for incorporating the Swedish countryside tourism sector in crisis management and communication. Crisis management and risk preparedness and awareness, and collaborations and relations between the tourism sector and other crisis management actors (municipalities and public authorities) are in focus, as well as the nature tourists themselves.

Risk assessment methods form corner stones in the striving to reduce risks and threats to human life and society. Proposed actions can be physical or non-physical and adopted or declined after political evaluation, with consideration taken to available resources and estimated effect on risk. To optimize and avoid regrettable actions, decision-makers are in need of well-founded analyses of how efficient different options might be. Analytically, there are several possible steps that can contribute. Firstly, the correlation between a measure and its effect should be based on causality, which often is difficult to establish quantitatively. High frequent accidents (e.g. traffic) can normally be treated statistically , while low frequent accidents with severe consequences (e.g. natural hazards) are more restricted to qualitative descriptions of correlation. Systematic monitoring of injury and damage data and gathering into databases, are a crucial activity for causality valuation. Secondly, economic valuation of effect is an important contribution in a cost-benefit perspective. Thirdly, a measure often brings several different effects and some may fall outside the actual purpose. An additional problem is how to handle effects that exert varied influence on different stakeholders or social groups in society. Fourthly, certain criteria are required for final prioritization. For instance, in analysis of goal fulfillment, effects are compared with politically decided quantified goals. In cases where basic data from steps 1-3 are incomplete, alternative criteria like “acceptable risk” might be necessary to agree about politically. To use similar approaches on how to describe and quantify effect correlations, promote gathered efforts at local level where risk reducing measures are decided upon by different actors and with regard to diverse local conditions. Tests of suitable methods and approaches to measure efficiency of planned or accomplished actions in gain for risk prevention, are described and discussed.

Sammanfattning

Inledning: Sverige strävar sedan 2010 mot en nollvision där ingen ska omkomma eller skadas allvarligt till följd av brand (MSB, 2009). Detta till trots omkommer varje år drygt 100 människor som ett resultat av just bränder, där framförallt äldre och personer med funktionsnedsättning är särskilt riskutsatta. För att främja arbetet mot nollvisionen publicerade MSB vägledningen Brandsäker bostad för alla, under 2013. Vägledningens tilltänkta syfte är att fungera som en metodhandbok för hur en individanpassad brandskyddsverksamhet kan bedrivas på kommunnivå. I vilken utsträckning som ett sådant arbete bedrivs samt vilket genomslagskraft vägledningen har fått är emellertid oklart. Avsikten med denna studie är därmed att undersöka just detta.  

Metod: Studien har en kvalitativ ansats där sammanlagt tio semistrukturerade intervjuer har utförts i Skåne och Värmland. Därefter har data analyserats med hjälp av en manifest innehållsanalys.

Resultat: Totalt har följande tre kategorier genererats: Den första kategorin, Individanpassat brandskydd är utmanande, konkretiserar problematiken kring individanpassat brandskydd och identifierar riskgrupper och huvudaktörer. Andra kategorin, Kommunerna antar utmaningen, presenterar hur de utvalda kommunerna arbetar med individanpassat brandskydd, och vilka aktörer som är verksamhetsutövare. Avslutningsvis beskriver Saker och ting kan förbättras hur MSBs roll i sammanhanget ser ut samt hur vägledningen har tagits emot på kommunnivå.

Slutsats: Sammantaget visar resultatet att de granskade kommunerna arbetar med individanpassat brandskydd, om än i olika utsträckning. Det påtalas även att det uteslutande är vård- och omsorgsförvaltningen samt räddningstjänsten som är verksamhetsutövare på lokal nivå. Detta medför att identifieringsprocessen av riskindivider är begränsad till ovan nämnda förvaltningars verksamheter. Det nuvarande individanpassade brandskyddsarbetet är därmed initierat, men har ännu inte uppnått sin fulla potential. Ett antal övriga aktörer, däribland socialförvaltningen, har identifierats som nödvändiga för att verksamheten ska kunna utvecklas och bli mer effektiv, men de tycks inte inbegripas i den nuvarande arbetsprocessen.  

Genomförandet av övningar är en nyckel till stärkt förmåga att agera effektivt i kris. CriseIT-projekten har haft som mål att bidra till detta genom att skapa möjligheter för kommuner och andra aktörer med krisövningsbehov att öva enklare och oftare.

Det finns en önskan om, och en medvetenhet om behoven av, att öva mer än vad som görs i nuläget i många organisationer. Digitala verktyg är ett sätt att göra det möjligt att öva oftare, med lägre resursåtgång och kortare tid för planering och genomförande. Corona-pandemin har ytterligare gjort det tydligt vilka möjligheter digitaliseringen innebär för att effektivisera processer som tidigare varit inramade av tids-och rumsbegränsningar –t.ex. övning.

Denna rapport syftar till att på ett lättillgängligt sätt redogöra för och diskutera utmaningar och möjligheter med den digitala övningsprocessen, så som den kommit till uttryck i CriseIT-projekten, genom att beskriva metodiska arbetssätt för design, genomförande och utvärdering av digitala krisövningar samt några perspektiv på implementering av digital övningsmetodik i organisationer. Målgrupp för rapporten är den som arbetar med krisberedskap i offentlig eller privat verksamhet, och som önskar lära sig mer om möjligheten att digitalisera sin övningsprocess. Arbetsrapporten är del av resultatredovisning för CriseIT2.

The objective of this comparative case study was to investigate and compare how Swedish municipalities gather and use warning information from official and unofficial sources at the municipal level, as well as the circumstances under which that process has a chance to succeed. The overall conclusions of the study are that official and unofficial warnings have the potential to play complementary roles for municipalities making decisions about flood response, giving the municipalities a wider perspective and better opportunity to assess risk and to act appropriately. The required resources for using official warnings and getting access to unofficial warning sources are not evenly distributed among municipalities, and a lack of systematization of access to warning information hinders the flood response potential.

As a result of the United Nations’ International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990-2000), and recent high profile disasters, disaster risk reduction has climbed high on the international political agenda. There has been a paradigm shift from reacting to disasters towards preparing for and mitigating effects of disasters. Among the measures that have been highlighted on the disaster risk reduction agenda are early warning systems. In a Swedish context, there are needs for early warnings for various flood risk types. Municipalities carry big responsibilities for managing flood risks, and early warnings have a potential to facilitate decision-making and ultimately reduce flood losses.

The aim of this thesis is to describe how a variety of flood warning signals are used in the risk management process of Swedish municipalities, how they can contribute to the flood risk reducing process, and which factors influence the success of this. The thesis is based on two papers.

Paper I is based on interviews with three respondents from Swedish municipalities that have invested in and established local early warning systems. The paper shows that the possible effects from a local early warning system are not only reduced flood losses but also potential spinoff, the occurrence of which is dependent on the well-being of the organisation and its risk management processes.

Paper II is based on interviews with 23 respondents at 18 Swedish municipalities, who have responsibilities related to flood risk management, and one respondent who works at SMHI with hydrological warning. The paper shows that municipalities can use a variety of complementary flood warning signals to facilitate decision-making for a proactive flood response. This is however not systematically the case, and is dependent on available resources.

The theoretical contribution of this thesis is a development of existing conceptual models of early warning systems with respect to risk management and system contexts, and the use of complementary warning signals.

The tapping strategy for Lake Vänern was changed in a decision made by the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland and Vattenfall Ltd., on behalf of the government, in order to reduce the risk of flooding in the Lake Vänern area. It was mentioned in the decision that a modified tapping strategy could have some negative environmental and social consequences.

In the spring and summer of 2009 the water levels in Lake Vänern were lower than usual, and since a lot of people who, for various purposes, make use of Lake Vänern were negatively affected, voices were raised in protest of the modified tapping strategy. In the media you could read about the problems people were having as a consequence of the low water levels, and their concerns regarding a more frequent recurrence of years with low water levels as an effect of the new tapping strategy.

The Centre for Climate and Safety at Karlstad University initiated a project on mapping the categories of people affected as well as the social consequences they had experienced due to the lower water levels. During the months of June, July and August, interviews were conducted with some 20 people who in one way or another use Lake Vänern.

The results of the study showed that many were dissatisfied with the modified tapping strategy, and that they experienced several negative social consequences due to it, mainly for boating and for living in the area. The study also showed that they were hoping for a solution that would not affect the people who make use of Lake Vänern for social purposes.

This article builds on the field of collaborative crisis management, a mix of collaborative public management (CPM) and crisis management (CM). A field that often focuses on large-scale threats, sometimes labelled societal challenges, whose impacts are broad and cross-cutting and impacts many actors in society and drives demand for collaboration. In this study, we are interested in events that have broad and disastrous impacts on soci- ety, high degrees of uncertainty and potentially cascading effects and we study this through an in-depth case study of collaborative crisis manage- ment tasked with contingency planning for dam failure risk in a large river basin in central Sweden. We find that there was a lack in reach of the col- laboration potentially limiting capacity and capacity building in ways that can limit preparedness and increase vulnerability in a crisis situation. We also found that contingency planning was treated as a demarcated project with a beginning and an end and not entirely as a continuous process. Both these observations go against the basic principles of contingency planning. Hence, there is a need to acknowledge and abridge varying lev- els of organisational capacity and build/maintain awareness within and between the organisations and actors involved. This study shows that the practice of cross-sector collaboration and contingency planning is both complex and complicated. The article has the potential to aid policy-mak- ers in the field to pinpoint central aspects of cross-sector collaboration and contingency planning that needs to be addressed in order to mitigate limits to preparedness and increased vulnerability in a crisis situation. A deeper knowledge on these challenges and problems can also support progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 (especially in relation to the aspect of building resilient infrastructure) through its empir- ical focus on infrastructure failure in terms of dam failure.

There is an increasing demand for more compatible and complete information to support evidence based risk management at the international level. At the moment, development in this direction occurs more successfully at the national level. In Europe, StorMe (Switzerland), AVI (Italy), the Swedish Natural Hazards Information System (Sweden), NSMES (Romania) and Skrednett (Norway) are good examples of natural hazard information systems where data on past events, frequency of events, hazard mapping of retrospective and potential endangered areas, multi-risk assessments, risk maps, etc., are compiled in user-friendly web solutions. The creation of integrated systems aim towards increased effectiveness in societal contingency planning at regional or local levels. Weather this goal is attained or not in society, or if the system is cost effective, is more or less impossible to measure quantitatively for free internet systems due to system owners lack of control on how their data is used. Qualitative measures from interviews with known end users can serve as indicators of success or failure. In this study, interviews were conducted with 11 recurrent users of the Norwegian database “Skrednett” (www.skrednett.no). Their answers show consensus around the database significance for societal needs in general, but also around a call for more compatible data to be used in other external map tools, or a development towards a more integrated, standalone, risk tool.

This paper aims to explore how local early warning systems (EWS) for floods are established at the municipality level in Sweden. The study also aims to analyse the role of EWSs in a risk management context. The overall purpose of this study is to elucidate how and to what extent the adoption of local EWSs can generate value added benefits throughout the wider risk management process.

Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with supervisors at each municipality in order to depict how local EWS are established at the municipality level in Sweden. The interviews went through a content analysis with respect to theory on EWS and theory on the risk management process.

The possible effects from an EWS is not only reduced flood losses but also potential spinoff. The possibility of spinoff effects from the system, but also the mitigating effectiveness in case of a flood is largely dependent on the well-being of the organization and its risk management processes.

This study widens the understanding of the value of an EWS and that the organizational culture and state of risk management system has influence on the availability of such value. Identifying the potential added value from EWSs is important from a more general disaster risk reduction perspective, as it helps to further motivate implementation of proactive risk management measures. This knowledge can be of help to others who investigate the possibilities of investing in EWSs.

SMHI, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has developed a workshop tool to help actors who work with climate adaptation to think freely in a visionary and creative way about what a future climate-adapted society might look like. The Center for Societal Risk Research (CSR) at Karlstad University was commissioned in 2023 to conduct an in-depth study of the participants’ experiences of the workshop and their view of its usefulness in a longer time perspective. The study has collected data from people who completed the workshop during the first half of 2023 under the auspices of SMHI, and from people who completed the workshop during the second half of 2023 under the auspices of researchers at CSR. Data collection for the first part of the study took place through questionnaires, interviews and observations during the completed workshop, and for the second part of the study through questionnaires and interviews some six months after the completed workshop. The study discusses how the workshop, with its focus on solutions, positive messages and narratives, is a suitable tool for moving forward unconditionally in the visionary part of the climate adaptation process. The study shows the importance of the workshop being carried out in an established climate adaptation process, where it can play a role in a larger context and can be anchored in a constructive way, thereby increasing the possibility of overcoming adaptation barriers. The workshop could serve as a foundation in a more extensive backcasting process(a method where a desired future is defined and steps are taken backwards to the present in order to identify policies and measures that can enable the desired future) and has the potential to create greater future awareness among those who participate in it.

The effects of climate change are already being felt today, and future effects, which will be determined by the readiness and resolve of today’s world leaders, are fraught with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and transboundary effects – characteristics of systemic risk. Since climate change is seen as a threat multiplier, the risks that might be impacted by climate change, such as floods and dam failure, will be affected by systemic risk characteristics as well. Recent literature on risk governance calls for a more inclusive approach to address the challenges of systemic risks. Sweden has adopted the Sendai Framework, which aims to reduce disaster risk and strengthen societal resilience through a more people-centered approach. Sweden can be expected to have the resources and institutional structures needed to be able to implement the framework at a high level. However, evaluations of recent crises have shown a discrepancy between what can be expected and actual performance. This thesis aims to increase the understanding of contextual barriers to and drivers of inclusive risk governance, with a focus on responsibilities, (mandated) collaboration, and stakeholder participation, as an approach to increase societal resilience against disaster and systemic risk. The aim is reached by studying flood-related systemic risks and their governance. Three distinct, qualitative case studies focusing on different aspects of the Swedish disaster risk reduction and risk governance systems in relation to the risk of floods and dam failure are the empirical foundation for the four papers that are appended in the thesis. The thesis concludes that there is a need for a change in how resilience is framed, as part of a paradigm shift to a discourse that views resilience as a measure of adaptive capacity, and a change in how systemic risks should be understood and governed, as part of a paradigm shift to an inclusive risk governance framework.