Participation at the symposium «Naturkatastrofer og samfunnssikkerhet»

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.

The seminar included presentations of the annual national risk report by the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (the report can be downloaded here), as well as a presentation of the fire in Lærdal based on a report by SP Fire Research (the report can be viewed here). 
Symposium.

Presentation and meeting with DSB in April 2015

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.

Jo-DSB

Two abstracts accepted at the 12th ESA Conference in Prague

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

ESA

Second field trip to Lærdal – March 2015

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).

Figure 5- Being interviewed by Helg & Kvardag. Photo- Odd Helge Brugrand
Being interviewed by Helg & Kvardag. Photo: Odd Helge Brugrand

Paper accepted at the SRA conference in Maastricht, June 2015

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.

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Initial visit to Lærdal prior to fieldwork

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 29th, 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.

Lærdal1 Lærdal2 Lærdal3 Lærdal4
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