How do European Union (EU) member states communicate risks to their citizens? In this study, we define risk communication as the information provided by different levels of government to citizens regarding possible future crises to which the general public might be subjected. We seek to answer the following questions: Are there any patterns in the risk communication strategies among EU member states in terms of the sender of information, the message conveyed, the method used, and the intended audience? Finally, to what extent is the state involved in ensuring the safety of its citizens? To tackle these questions, we examine the risk communication strategy of eight countries: Sweden, Finland, Germany, England, France, Estonia, Greece, and Cyprus. Our data consist of governmental web sites, publications, campaigns, and other modes of communication, such as videos posted on YouTube, with questions centering on institutional actors, methods of delivery, content, and effectiveness. We find that the institutional architecture of risk communication aligns with the broad administrative system of each member state. Countries tend to focus on risks that are specific to their context, with Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Germany having a special focus on consequences and providing guidelines to the public on how to survive for a certain period of time in the absence of the state. Especially in Sweden, though the state is a salient actor in risk communication through the dissemination of information at the agency level, the state retreats while urging the resilient citizen to take control of his or her own crisis management.

This paper provides an overview and mapping of needs and use of data related to formal risk analysis within the context of critical infrastructures, including activities of risk assessments and risk modelling as a part of preventive work against major accidents and crises. The aim is to contribute to a greater understanding of the type of data that is actually used in published sources where different risk assessment or risk analysis methods are applied for critical infrastructure protection. The study focuses specifically on the presentation of applications of quantitative or semi-quantitative risk analysis in the scientific literature within the domain of societally important services and critical infrastructures. The survey was delimited to peer reviewed research papers between the years 2010 and 2020 and resulted in a total number of 183 papers subject for evaluation. The results provide insights into the type of data that is used, missing or difficult to obtain for an application of the identified methods. To obtain a comprehensive critical infrastructure risk analysis data needs are related to three different data dimensions; geospatial topology data, socio-economic data, and infrastructure data. However, no databases are currently available with the explicit purpose to support critical infrastructure risk analysis. Even though this is not viewed as a problem in the examined papers, collecting that data is resource intensive which is a barrier for a more systematic use of formal risk analysis methods.

This paper examines the role of regional airports in regional and municipal crisis preparedness based on evidence from a case study in Sweden. During the summer of 2018, Sweden experienced some of the most extensive wildfires in modern time. Aerial suppression, for which airports provided the essential preconditions, played an important role in extinguishing these fires. This study includes analyses of public policies that shape the Swedish airport system as well as evidence from interviews and a workshop with stakeholders. The results show that an efficiently operated network of regional airports is critical not only for crisis management but also to ensure important societal services such as health care in sparsely inhabited regions. Moreover, access to quick transportation by air is necessary for the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, tourism industry, public institutions and private businesses. Additionally intensified by effects of both the public debate on flight shame and the COVID-19 pandemic on air-based transportation, the insights arising from this study emphasise that the currently one-sided focus on the number of passengers is an insufficient foundation for the Swedish airport system to construct a resilient base for regional development, crisis management and civil defense.

With the growing importance of enhancing modern society’s resilience, planning for critical infrastructure protection has become essential. However, such national planning must contend with many types of uncertainty. This paper characterises sources of uncertainty that are associated with a lack of knowledge, as exemplified by Swedish planning of emergency power supplies. The planning under investigation concerns civil protection from the negative effects of a power shortage. A decision process is intended to support this national strategic management goal by identifying and prioritising electricity consumers who are critical to society at the local, regional and national levels. The analysis of related documentation yields three sources of uncertainty (S) interrelated with this multi-level planning (MLP) for emergency response: (S1) the planning process in general, (S2) the decision-making process in particular and (S3) the direction and guidance alongside these processes. Interviews with decision-makers reveal a detailed specification of these sources of uncertainty. The results thus provide a solid basis for further goal-directed improvement of national MLP approaches. Moreover, this specification contributes to scholarly debate on the systemic effects of sources of uncertainty due to a lack of knowledge. Lastly, the findings constitute a thinking framework that is suggested as a foundation for analytical work in similar complex planning environments as well as for evidence-based communication to the wider public concerning risks and resilience.

This paper highlights major methodological obstacles to studying and performing critical infrastructure protection (CIP) in general and CIP governance in particular. The study simultaneously examines a research project on and practice in the context of Swedish CIP. The complex planning approach of interest is called Styrel, a Swedish acronym for Steering Electricity to prioritised power consumers. It aims to identify and prioritise power consumers of societal importance, collectively referred to as critical infrastructure (CI), to provide an emergency response plan for the event of a national power shortage. Methodologically, the investigation uses material from document studies, interviews and a survey, which involved many actors from the Swedish case. For the analysis of the methodological obstacles, this study applies an abstracted research and development process that encompasses four steps: data collection, data assessment, decision-making and evaluation. The paper mutually maps the insights from the research project to the empirical evidence from the case study. Through this reflective analysis, the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges that significantly impede research and practice in the context of national and international CIP, for example, insufficient information sharing and knowledge exchange among parties, a lack of integrated and advanced methods, and uncertainty in policies that induces a variety of local approaches. In addition, since empirical research on implemented CIP plans is limited, this paper addresses this gap. It reveals five general obstacles for both research and practice: a) the access to high-quality data, b) the loss of knowledge over time, c) the interpretation and evaluation of processes and methods, d) the transferability and comparability of data, results and insights; whereas all culminate in 5) a lack of collective intelligence. The accumulation of these obstacles hinders a detailed assessment of decision-making for CIP and its consequences on society. For this reason, this study emphasises the need for enhancing mutual understanding among the various parties in the area of CIP while respecting relevant security issues when inventing novel methods that facilitate collective intelligence.