Mapping societal functions, flows and dependencies to strengthen community resilience – results from an initial study
Hassel, Henrik LU and Johansson, Jonas LU
(2013)
Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting (SRA 2013)
- Abstract
- Communities are becoming increasingly dependent on critical societal functions and flows, such as energy supply, transportation of goods and people, school and health care. Dependencies between these functions and flows are also increasing. These trends imply that disruptions in the functions and flows may quickly lead to large societal consequences through domino effects which may be very difficult to understand and foresee. Understanding the functions, flows and their dependencies is key in order to increase the resilience of the communities. Gaining such an understanding requires systematic mapping of relevant information and methods for analysis. This paper presents a new method for mapping societal functions, flows, and their... (More)
- Communities are becoming increasingly dependent on critical societal functions and flows, such as energy supply, transportation of goods and people, school and health care. Dependencies between these functions and flows are also increasing. These trends imply that disruptions in the functions and flows may quickly lead to large societal consequences through domino effects which may be very difficult to understand and foresee. Understanding the functions, flows and their dependencies is key in order to increase the resilience of the communities. Gaining such an understanding requires systematic mapping of relevant information and methods for analysis. This paper presents a new method for mapping societal functions, flows, and their dependencies. Such a method is very useful as part of a comprehensive community-level risk and vulnerability assessments. The mapping is conducted by eliciting information from actors, both public and private, that represent critical societal functions. The mapping method is divided into three main parts: 1) System-level mapping, including e.g. mapping values/objectives for the system and what societal functions are contributing to their achievement. 2) Function-specific mapping, including e.g. mapping values/objectives for a specific function and what activities that must be performed to achieve them, as well as what flows are dependent on the activities and what the actor is dependent on to be able to perform the activities), 3) System-level aggregation, i.e. aggregating and synthesizing the information from step 2 into a holistic picture of a community or a region. The mapping method has been applied in an initial study of public and private actors in a specific geographic region (two different municipalities) in Sweden. From the initial results a complex picture of functions, flows and dependencies emerge which stresses the importance of these types of methods to guide public and private policy makers in governing risk and vulnerability. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/4588625
- author
- Hassel, Henrik
LU
and Johansson, Jonas
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2013
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting (SRA 2013)
- conference location
- Baltimore, United States
- conference dates
- 2013-12-08
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- b272de3e-eac6-43e3-8617-ff44bd5cb938 (old id 4588625)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 14:33:59
- date last changed
- 2023-04-18 17:59:59
@misc{b272de3e-eac6-43e3-8617-ff44bd5cb938,
abstract = {{Communities are becoming increasingly dependent on critical societal functions and flows, such as energy supply, transportation of goods and people, school and health care. Dependencies between these functions and flows are also increasing. These trends imply that disruptions in the functions and flows may quickly lead to large societal consequences through domino effects which may be very difficult to understand and foresee. Understanding the functions, flows and their dependencies is key in order to increase the resilience of the communities. Gaining such an understanding requires systematic mapping of relevant information and methods for analysis. This paper presents a new method for mapping societal functions, flows, and their dependencies. Such a method is very useful as part of a comprehensive community-level risk and vulnerability assessments. The mapping is conducted by eliciting information from actors, both public and private, that represent critical societal functions. The mapping method is divided into three main parts: 1) System-level mapping, including e.g. mapping values/objectives for the system and what societal functions are contributing to their achievement. 2) Function-specific mapping, including e.g. mapping values/objectives for a specific function and what activities that must be performed to achieve them, as well as what flows are dependent on the activities and what the actor is dependent on to be able to perform the activities), 3) System-level aggregation, i.e. aggregating and synthesizing the information from step 2 into a holistic picture of a community or a region. The mapping method has been applied in an initial study of public and private actors in a specific geographic region (two different municipalities) in Sweden. From the initial results a complex picture of functions, flows and dependencies emerge which stresses the importance of these types of methods to guide public and private policy makers in governing risk and vulnerability.}},
author = {{Hassel, Henrik and Johansson, Jonas}},
language = {{eng}},
title = {{Mapping societal functions, flows and dependencies to strengthen community resilience – results from an initial study}},
year = {{2013}},
}