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On April 28, 2015 Ardis Storm-Mathisen, Nina Heidenstrøm and Jo Helle-Valle from SIFO attended a seminar on natural disasters and civil protection organized by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Research Council.

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SIFO and Teknisk Museum paid a visit to DSB in Tønsberg on April 20, 2015. The purpose of the meeting was to present the Homerisk-project to a wide audience at DSB, and to engage in a conversation on areas of potential cooperation and mutual information sharing.  In the first session Jo Helle-Valle from SIFO presented the project, and in the second session the analysis unit at DSB teamed up with SIFO/Teknisk Museum for further discussions. The meeting was highly fruitful and several actions were suggested.

Ardis Storm-Mathisen and Nina Heidenstrøm (SIFO) will present two papers at the 12th Conference of the European Sociological Association in Prague (August 25-28 2015). Click here for more information.

Paper 1:
Session RN8 – Disaster, Conflict and Social Crisis 
Title: «A network approach to households’ role in electricity and ICT breakdowns»
Authors: Nina Heidenstrøm and Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Paper 2:
RN22 – Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty
Title: «Applying a social practice perspective to risk research»
Authors: Ardis Storm-Mathisen and Nina Heidenstrøm

We congratulate Linda Kvarnlöf – our partner researcher from Mid Sweden University – who have finalised and recently defended her PhD thesis Citizen First Responders: Boundaries, Positionings and Emergence in Stories from the Incident Site. Her thesis  focuses on the role of citizens in crisis and emergency management.

During the second fieldtrip to Lærdal, researchers Ardis Storm-Mathisen and Nina Heidenstrøm were interviewed by the local newspaper, Helg & Kvardag. The full interview can be downloaded here.

In the first week of March, PhD student Nina Heidenstrøm and project manager Ardis Storm-Mathisen from SIFO made a new trip to Lærdal to continue their fieldwork. The fieldwork included visits and interviews with some of the households that had experienced power and ICT outage during the fire. We also visited several locations that were important resource spots during and after the event, such as the The Volunteer Central that was responsible for organizing and handing out donations from the community. During our visit we were also interviewed by the local newspaper (Helg & Kvardag). We talked about the goals for the HOMERISK project and our interest in interviewing more households in Lærdal. Information posters were placed in the local shops for recruitment purposes. A new fieldwork to Lærdal is planned in week 18. For further information read here (pdf).

Being interviewed by Helg & Kvardag. Photo: Odd Helge Brugrand

Harald Throne-Holst (SIFO) has been notified that the paper «Comparing assigned roles of households in the Nordic risk management plans» has been accepted at the 24th annual SRA-Europe conference in Maastricht, June 15-17 2015. The special theme of the conference is «Science, Policy and Society – Bridging the gap between risk and science».

SRA-Europe (Society for Risk Analysis Europe) provides a platform for industrialists, policy makers and academics to discuss the ‘state of the art’ and future directions in the study of risk analysis, to understand concerns about the risk from both public and scientific perspectives, to promote efficient risk mitigation and to develop effective risk communication.

The HOMERISK project aims at investigating the role of households when electricity and digital infrastructure fail. In each of the participating countries, two case studies have been chosen where a disaster or crisis situation led to such breakdowns. The 2014 fire in Lærdal is one of two Norwegian cases. On January 29^th, project manager Ardis Storm-Mathisen and PhD student Nina Heidenstrøm travelled to Lærdal for an initial meeting with a contact person, and to take a closer look at the area.

Top left: Looking at the old wooden buildings in Lærdalsøyri. Photo: Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Top right: New dwellings in Lærdal. Photo: Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Bottom left: Taking photos of the affected area. Photo: Nina Heidenstrøm
Bottom right: Telecom (left) and electricity (right) infrastructure in Lærdal. Photo: Nina Heidenstrøm

In january 2015 HOMERISK submitted an application to Norwegian Social Science Data Service to ensure the project followed statutory data privacy requirements. A few weeks later HOMERISK received approval and the data gathering could commence.

Communication of the HOMERISK project results to the general public will be partly done through an exhibition at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology (Norsk Teknisk Museum – NTM) in 2017. Exhibition working title: «When the nets break down». Venue: NTM, 09:00 -12:00. Participants: Jan Alfred Andersson (NTM), Aiyana Hudgins (NTM), Jo Helle-Valle (SIFO), and Ardis Storm-Mathisen (SIFO).