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SAMRISK-2-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiko

Voluntary organizations in local emergency management

Alternative title: Frivillige organisasjoner i lokalt beredskapssamarbeid

Awarded: NOK 11.8 mill.

When a crisis occurs, resources beyond those of public authorities are often needed, and cooperation with volunteer actors is usually necessary to deal with acute events such as floods, forest fires or the search for missing persons. The project has investigated how cooperation between voluntary organisations and public actors works at the local level in Norway and Denmark and how such cooperation can be organised in a way that leads to good local emergency management capacity. Based on case studies in six Norwegian and two Danish municipalities as well as surveys of the main Norwegian rescue organisations, the project shows that volunteers are highly motivated to devote time to rescue work and that their motivation is strongly linked to the trust they experience, especially from the police. The volunteer rescuers find that cooperation with the police works very well: They experience that their expertise is recognised, valued and used, and the police and the volunteer rescuers usually have the same idea of the effort required in a particular situation. As a result, on site coordination during events functions smoothly and effectively. For their part, the police recognise the volunteer rescuers as an invaluable resource. Cooperation between municipal authorities and volunteer rescuers is more variable. The municipalities, for their part, see volunteers as a potential resource in crisis situations, but are reluctant to include them in municipal emergency plans because they consider the deployment of volunteers to be purely voluntary. Volunteers, for their part, express frustration at not being included in municipality crisis preparedness planning and fear, and in some cases have experienced, that their resources go unused in a crisis. Good and close cooperation between the volunteers, the police and the local authorities is seen as important for ensuring good local emergency preparedness.

Prosjektet har frembragt kunnskap som kommer aktører som inngår i redningstjenesten samt beslutningstakere til gode. For det første er kunnskapen om beredskapsfrivilliges motivasjon nyttig for de frivillige organisasjonene når de planlegger rekruttering og organiserer den frivillige aktiviteten. Gjennom prosjektperioden har prosjektgruppen samarbeidet tett med de viktigste beredskapsorganisasjonene. Organisasjonene har vært med på å utforme spørsmål til spørreundersøkelsen blant sine medlemmer, og resultatene fra disse undersøkelsene blir brukt strategisk i organisasjonenes utviklingsarbeid, med tanke på å sikre rekruttering og hindre frafall samt med tanke på hvordan samarbeidet med offentlige etater kan innrettes på en mest mulig effektiv måte. For det andre er kunnskapen om hva som skal til for å få til godt samarbeid med de frivillige, nyttig for kommunenes beredskapsarbeid. I små og mellomstore norske kommuner er ansvaret for beredskapen ofte plassert hos en ansatt som også har andre oppgaver. Beredskapsfeltet har få egne ressurser og vil profitere på å inngå samarbeid med frivillige organisasjoner. I mange tilfeller skjer ikke dette, av ulike årsaker. Funnene fra studien bidrar til å klargjøre hvilke faktorer som bidrar til at et slikt samarbeid kan komme i stand, fungere effektivt og tilføre kommunene sårt tiltrengte beredskapsressurser. Funn relevante for kommunene er formidlet gjennom åpne seminarer, rapportering i pressen og en kronikk i kommunal rapport. For det tredje har kunnskapen fra prosjektet vært nyttig for sentrale beslutningsmyndigheter. Innsikt i hvordan samarbeidet mellom frivillige og offentlige etater fungerer, sier noe om hvordan rammebetingelsene for samvirket i redningstjenesten bør legges til rette. Resultater fra prosjektet er blant annet formidlet gjennom foredrag holdt for Totalberedskapskommisjonens medlemmer og er blitt hyppig sitert i rapporten fra Totalberedskapskommisjonen (2023).

Handling emergency situations often requires resources beyond those available to public authorities. Well-coordinated collaboration with partners in civil society is therefore necessary to mitigate hazards at the local level. The purpose of the VOLEM project is to provide knowledge about the conditions for efficient public-voluntary emergency management collaboration at the local level. Through a comparative and methodologically diversified approach the project will investigate how and under what conditions institutional and individual factors affect the collaborative process and the resulting emergency response capacity. The literature points to mutual trust as a key ingredient in committing autonomous actors to collaborating towards a common goal. In examining the conditions for public-voluntary collaboration in emergency management, the VOLEM project will give special attention to the role of trust and how trustful relations are generated, sustained, and developed through various forms of collaboration. The project will also investigate the individual motivation of volunteers in the particularly demanding form of volunteer work that emergency management represents. Public-voluntary emergency management collaboration will be studied through comparative case studies of local communities in Norway and Denmark and through Norwegian nationwide surveys to volunteers, leadership in voluntary emergency organizations, and to emergency agencies and public authorities at the local level. Knowledge about the conditions under which efficient collaborative relationships are formed and work as intended, as well as knowledge of the factors that incites volunteers to contribute with their time and skills, can be used as input for organizing public-voluntary emergency collaboration in ways that enhance local emergency response capacity.

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SAMRISK-2-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiko