Preventing and Preparing for Disasters – The Role of a Swedish Local Emergent Citizen Group

Summary, in English

Disasters such as the storms that affected Sweden in 2005 and 2007 showed that

citizens initially conducted a large part of the disaster response, such as clearing roads, giving psychosocial support to affected neighbours and repairing power lines in collaboration with power companies. As a result of these storms, an Emergent Citizen Group (ECG) was established in a village which continued to work on risk prevention, even after the event. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse this local emergent citizen group’s continuing work on the prevention of local risk and vulnerability, and particularly, their work on flood prevention. The results

indicate that authorities seldom understand the ECG’s concerns about risks.

Authorities also lack the experience and capacity to collaborate with, and support, the ECG’s risk and vulnerability reduction work. Bureaucratic barriers and declining motivation among volunteers within the ECGs could undermine commitment to the prevention of risks.

• Author: Nicklas Guldåker; Kerstin Eriksson; Tuija Nieminen Kristofersson
• Department/s: Department of Human Geography; Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
• Publishing year: 2015
• Language: English
• Pages: 360-387
• Publication/Series: International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 3
• Links: http://ijmed.org/articles/686/; http://www.ijmed.org/articles/686/download/
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: International Research Committee on Disasters, IRCD
• Topic: Human Geography; Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified
• Keywords: Emergent Citizen Group; risk; storm; flood mitigation; Sweden
• Status: Published
• Project: FRIVA; Perspectives on vulnerability and need for help in the management of crises (within FRIVA II)
• Research group: LUCRAM (Lund University Center for Risk Analysis and Management
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0280-7270