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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the transfer of knowledge between preparedness activities and emergency response at the municipal level to improve emergency response.Design/methodology/approachA case study was carried out in the municipality of Ljungby using prewritten questions to analyse the collected empirical material. This material consisted of both municipality documents and interviews. The investigation involved municipal units that participate in emergency preparedness activities and those involved in the emergency response to a violent storm Gudrun that took place in 2005.FindingsThe findings show that the people in charge of the immediate response to the storm did not effectively use the analytic preparations created by those responsible for planning and preparations. Indeed to a great extent they used general response patterns and functions discovered from their own earlier experiences. These findings led to the development of a preliminary draft of requirements for a well‐functioning knowledge transfer from emergency preparedness work to response.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper demonstrates a need for municipalities to develop methods to increase transfer of knowledge of preparedness plans and analyses to improve response.Originality/valueThe paper shows that there is a potential to improve the preparedness process to reduce the gap between preparedness planning and its use in emergency response. The paper suggests a preliminary proposal for developing preparedness activities (in particular risk and vulnerability analyses) more suitable for emergency response.

There has been an increased focus in society on preparedness for emergency response in recent years. Today there is legislation that requires all Swedish authorities at the local, regional and national levels to prepare for emergency management and response. Since the task is rather new, most authorities are just beginning to address it. How the preparedness process should be designed and integrated into daily work has often not yet been decided. This licentiate thesis presents research on how Swedish authorities, at a local and regional level, are working to design their preparedness processes. The research questions are as follows: How does the preparedness process function? What are the challenges and obstacles faced by the organisations during the preparedness process? Studies examining the preparedness processes were carried out in five Swedish authorities at the local and regional level. Five challenges and obstacles were identified: - People not directly involved in the preparedness work do not read the plans created. - People not directly involved in the preparedness work are not familiar with the planning. - There is often no planned process (e.g. exercises and reflections) for transferring the results of the preparedness work. - Opportunities to gain a broader view of potential emergencies by the use of one scenario with its possible variations in the course of events are commonly overlooked. - Emergency managers have difficulties getting others in the organisation interested and committed to preparedness issues, including management. Every organisation has to develop its own process for working with preparedness for emergency response to further improve preparedness planning and avoid the five identified obstacles. To facilitate this effort, every organisation should consider who needs to be involved (both inside and outside the organisation) and what knowledge and competences these persons need to deal with future emergencies.

Contingency planning is widely considered to be an essential role of public authorities. Anticipation of what may happen, coupled with the prior allocation of resources, personnel, equipment, crisis control rooms, tasks, responsibilities and decision guidance/rules, is assumed to maximise the chances of a successful response in the event of a crisis. However, this paper proposes that the relationship between crisis planning and crisis management outcomes is more complex and nuanced relationship the often assumed. Contingency planning which is successful in the pre-crisis stage, does not guarantee a successful crisis response. Correspondingly, contingency planning failures in the pre-crisis stage, do not automatically lead to a flawed crisis response. The reasons rest primarily with the multiple influences on crisis responses – only some of which can be anticipated and planned for. The conclusion provides policy-oriented and analytical reflections which recognise the value of contingency planning, while suggesting that we should not inflate our expectation of contingency planners or rush too quickly to vilify them for a lack of adequate preparations.

A well functioning societal response to crises is benefited by individuals having adequate skills and knowledge. From a municipal perspective this requires the creation of a learning organization. The objective of this study is to determine whether individual municipal employees, who have the responsibility for preparedness planning, reason and act in ways that promote learning about crises and preparedness issues throughout the municipal organization. Analysis of interviews with preparedness planners in six Swedish municipalities on their strategies for preparedness planning, reveal that preparedness planning too often becomes a demarcated activity, restricted to not more than a handful of individuals. This study indicates that one reason for why the preparedness work becomes demarcated is that individuals central to the preparedness planning are not taking on roles for acting in ways that are required in order for a learning organization to be established.

AbstractOn March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the emerging COVID‐19 threat a pandemic following the global spread of the virus. A year later, a number of governments are being handed the concluding reports of national public inquiries tasked with investigating responses, mishaps, and identifying lessons for the future. The present article aims to identify a set of learning obstacles that may hinder effective lessons drawing from the COVID‐19 pandemic responses. The seven obstacles discussed in this article are: (1) retaining lessons and implementing them effectively, (2) effectively drawing lessons from other countries, (3) the potential for reforms to introduce unanticipated vulnerabilities elsewhere in the system, (4) political pressure, (5) drawing the conclusions from observations, (6) experts versus decision makers, and (7) reforms may not be related to the actual crisis. Exploring these obstacles will be central to future discussions concerning which kinds of responses will set precedent for future pandemics and global health crises.

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.

AbstractIn this article, we examine public policy change at the local level of governance in the aftermath of an extraordinary event. Using the case study of a Swedish municipality after the sweeping forest fire of 2014, we contend that policy entrepreneurship, like its market counterpart, may under certain conditions take on a wider range of behaviors that are not underpinned by the proactive quest for opportunities. Rather, a sense of urgency and necessity, professional norms, and some keen technical skills make for a different kind of entrepreneurship, which we label reactive policy entrepreneurship.

In the present article, practices of inclusion of different types of volunteers in the response to a large‐scale forest fire in Sweden are studied. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with three types of voluntary actors. The volunteers were organized to different degrees, from members of organizations and participants in emergent groups to organizationally unaffiliated individuals. Organized volunteers were the most easily included, particularly if they were members of voluntary emergency organizations. It was difficult for volunteers lacking relevant organizational affiliation to be included. Disaster response operations are dynamic, conditions change over time, and tensions between different modes, degrees, and levels of inclusion may arise. However, irrespective of changing conditions, practices of inclusion of highly organized volunteers work best.