Societal security in times of change – balancing the ability to handle the expected and the unexpected

Achieving a high level of societal security require actors on multiple societal levels to both plan for future crises (anticipation) and possess an ability to act in flexible ways not planned prior to the crisis (adaptation).

While both are key for societal security, the anticipatory and the adaptive perspectives are often addressed in different strands of research and not given equal weight in practice. As a result of the principle of subsidiarity, Swedish municipalities play a vital role for societal security.

However, the legal requirements on municipal risk and vulnerability assessments, a pillar of Swedish crisis management, largely build on the anticipatory perspective.

For this reason, this project aims to gain increased understanding of the preconditions for adaptive behaviour by collecting empirical data, using semi-structured interviews, from municipalities about how they have adapted in previous events.

The aim is also to complement a method for risk and vulnerability assessment, previously developed by the project researchers, with assessments of the preconditions needed for strengthening adaptive capacity.

This part will be carried out through an iterative process of method development in close collaboration with end-users, inspired by design research.

The project will be conducted by four researchers at Lund University with more than 10-years’ experience of Swedish crisis management research. The project will last for 3-years, and be divided into 4 phases.