Societal change is accelerating through continued rapid population growth and significant changes in demographics, technological advances, and increasing interconnectedness between various infrastructures. Together with climate change and a new global security situation these trends will inevitably lead to a change in the risk landscape. One of the key actors that has to deal with such change is the Fire and Rescue Services. These organisations are both governed by, and dependent on, formal and informal networks.
Often there are areas on the outskirts of a country where emergency response is rudimentary, located far from major cities and where critical infrastructure is vulnerable to these types of events. This is first and foremost untenable/indefensible for the citizens; however, authorities with emergency management responsibility need new methods in order to support the communities in their own efforts to build capacity, since the fire and rescue services do not necessarily have the capacity to carry out search and rescue operations as they are expected to in the future. One of the many challenges, besides the violent and devastating events themselves, is that the areas can also be threatened with relocation if the locals are unable to cope with the rising threats of climate change – this is critical for the Nordic societies in general.
A recent study from Iceland reveals that many tourists ignore repeated warning signs when visiting sites. We feel invulnerable when we are on holiday and we want the perfect selfie, is one of the explanations from one of the researchers behind the study
Bengt Sundelius is chair of the committee for NordForsk’s Nordic Societal Security Initiative. We asked him to identify some of the challenges facing the Nordic region at this very moment.
Societal security has high priority on the Nordic political agenda, but it would be simplistic to paint the Nordic region as completely uniform, says authors behind newly published book
The central aim of this project is to develop recommendations for resilient governance mechanisms for health cyberspace that can meet social expectations regarding the security and privacy of health data, while enabling broad use of health data to benefit society.
A new call for funding is available for collaborative research projects on Nordic societal security in light of the emerging global and regional trends. The total amount of funding available for this Nordic call is set at NOK 44 million and the deadline for the submissions is 20 November 2019.
A total of 28 grant applications were submitted under the call entitled “Nordic societal security in light of the emerging global and regional trends”. Four of the projects have now been granted funding from a total budget of NOK 44 million.
