Societal Safety: Concept, Borders and Dilemmas

Abstract

In most industrialized countries, the end of the Cold War marked a change in focus from preparedness for war to an increasing focus on civil society's own vulnerability and safety. To meet new threats and changing risks, there is also a need for new analytical concepts. Societal safety is a concept developed in Norway during the last decade. It could be defined as: ‘The society's ability to maintain critical social functions, to protect the life and health of the citizens and to meet the citizens' basic requirements in a variety of stress situations’. It aims to be a systematic approach for understanding, mitigating and responding to social problems such as extraordinary stresses and losses, interferences in complex and mutual dependent systems, or lack of trust in vital social institutions. Future threats to society are not limited to specific sectors or areas, but stem from complex interactions amongst economic, technological, social and cultural factors. Thus, the main challenges to improve societal safety will be the ability to coordinate, organize and assign clear roles to different actors at the international, national and local levels. Societal safety has interfaces with other safety‐related areas such as national security, sustainable development, human security and incident management (handling of isolated accidents, common illness and ordinary criminal acts). Societal safety is, however, a sensitive political issue containing dilemmas and value choices that are hardly possible to perceive or solve as pure scientific problems.

The role of citizens in emergency management systems in the Czech Republic

“…So again, a better definition of roles within society is needed to be able to coordinate and to organize actors on all possible levels in order to improve coping with such threats [14]. According to the "upper echelons theory" [15], top managers structure a situation so that decisions reflect their world view.…”

“…Future hazards for human society resulting from complex interactions between economical, technical and social factors represent a new challenge for redefined emergency management systems. Such systems have to establish and also recognize all possible roles taken by communities on all levels and to organize stakeholders accordingly [5].…”

A Contribution to Empirical Revitalization of the Samfunnssikkerhet Concept

“…An interpretation of Tehler et al is that the design of samfunnssikkerhet does not take into account the importance of involving all relevant parties in the testing and validation of methods (risk and vulnerability analyses) and measures, nor does it account for adapting analyses and measures to the needs of the particular organization (see Challenge 3 and 4). The introduction to this paper presented a summary definition of samfunnssikkerhet, understood as the practices and capacities required to prevent and handle unwanted events that (a) exceed the standard procedures of the community; (b) threaten the population's confidence in the ability of vital institutions to safeguard life, health, basic needs; and (c) threaten the reliability of critical societal functions such as hospitals, electricity, and water supply [3,4,7]. Based on this understanding, practices and capacities can be interpreted to include breadth and flexibility regarding stakeholder involvement, methods, and design approaches in the work on samfunnssikkerhet (see Challenges 1-4).…”

“…Specifically, the samfunnssikkerhet or societal safety concept is currently used in a broad sense that considers safety and security against challenges ranging from limited natural occurring events to threats against the nation's independence or existence [1]. This author's systematic literature review of existing security research reveals 16 scientific publications that address how the Norwegian samfunnssikkerhet or societal safety concept can be understood [2], of which only a few [3][4][5][6][7][8] represent marked developments in terms of advancing the understanding of the concept rather than just referring to it or discussing it briefly. This includes Aven et al's [3] understanding that samfunnssikkerhet is about planning to create a resilient society; Olsen et al's [4] identification of the general dimensions (extraordinary stress, complexity, and confidence) required to define samfunnssikkerhet; Jakobsson's [5] exploration of how triggers such as major accidents and risk assessments increase the focus on samfunnssikkerhet; and Junker's [6] emphasis on how samfunnssikkerhet can be strengthened through measures to promote the natural resilience of ecosystems.…”

“…The challenge manifests in the government spending resources on the design of samfunnssikkerhet in theory, while at the same time, through unclear conditions or effects of measures, not facilitating the introduction of measures in practice among public and private enterprises. The exploration of samfunnssikkerhet further consists of some theoretical definition attempts that can be summarized in the following: Samfunnssikkerhet includes the practices and capacities required to prevent and handle unwanted events that (a) exceed the standard procedures of the community; (b) threaten the population's confidence in the ability of vital institutions to safeguard life, health, and basic needs; and (c) threaten the reliability of critical societal functions such as hospitals, electricity and water supply [3,4,7].…”