News

Drawing upon years of expereince and research, CNDS fellows are sharing their knowledge and wisdom with the public in efforts to better understand the current Coronavirus pandemic.

Although the Centre for Societal Risk Research at Karlstad University is part of CNDS, some of their research extends beyond the traditional boundaries of that which typically falls under the umbrella of disaster risk reduction but which is of interest and value for our efforts in understanding social dynamics and how they influence vulnerabilities, perceptions, governance, policies, institutions, and consequently the natural environment . In a new study at the Centre examines how elderly people in Sweden experience risk in regards of the ongoing corona-pandemic, their ability and willingness to handle the situation and their experiences of how mental health is affected by the situation.

CNDS PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Åsa Davidsson published the article "Disasters as an opportunity for improved environmental conditions" in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Here she presents case studies where disasters provided a window of opportunity for change that included social action with (potentially) positive effects on the environment. 

CNDS fellow Professor Daniel Nohrstedt and colleagues offer insights into the unfolding phenomena in their commentary, which draws on the lessons of the policy sciences literature to understand the dynamics related to COVID-19. They explore the ways in which scientific and technical expertise, emotions, and narratives influence policy decisions and shape relationships among citizens, organizations, and governments. They also discuss varied processes of adaptation and change, including learning, surges in policy responses, alterations in networks (locally and globally), implementing policies across transboundary issues, and assessing policy success and failure. They conclude by identifying understudied aspects of the policy sciences that deserve attention in the pandemic’s aftermath.

CNDS researchers at Karlstad University hosted a group of researchers from the University of West England, University of Gloucestershire, and Linköping University for a two-day workshop with the aim to address doing transdisciplinary research in collaboration with actors outside academia.

The research and collaboration project SPLASH has come to an end. The final project results and achievements were presented at a seminar at Länsförsäkringar's office in Jönköping, where the project had started two years earlier. Around twenty participants from several insurance companies, municipalities, and universities attended the final project seminar.  This two-year project was funded by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelse).

Karlstad university is at the forefront in climate and public safety research. In order to enable larger research projects and developed international collaborations, the former CNDS collaborative partner Centre for Climate and Safety (CCS) and Centre for Public Safety (CPS) have now been merged into a new centre: the Centre for Societal Risk Research (CSR). So CNDS now welcomes CSR as our new collaborative partner from Karlstad University.

Professor Rutgersson and Dr. Mårtensson provide some promising news about how the Corona crisis can actually provide new opportunities for the air and environment. For example, there is evidence that air pollution in China decreased by 20-30 percent this February, and satellite images show that the emissions of the poisonous gas nitrogen dioxide decreased throughout Europe.

Uppsala University has appointed Daniel Nohrstedt to professor. 

In this Swedish book “Att Samverka i kris - Vanliga människor i ovanliga situationer"(Cooperating during a crisis: Ordinary people in unusual situations), current research findings are interspersed with fictitious stories about ordinary people who end up in difficult situations and are forced to navigate the crisis management system and actors. This research project and book were commissioned by the Swedish Agency for Civil Contingencies (MSB). The authors are researchers at the Swedish Defence University.

CNDS provided  Early Career Scientists (i.e., PhD students and postdocs) from CNDS partnering universities Uppsala University (UU), Karlstad University (KAU) and Swedish Defence University (FHS)  to apply for funding for interdisciplinary work within natural hazard and disaster science. The following have applied and have been selected to receive funding: Frederike Albrecht (FHS), Elena Mondino (UU), Maximilian Wanner (UU), Jacob Hileman (UU), Emma Rhodes (UU), and Joshi Naranji (UU).

In 2010 efforts initiated by senior fellows from Uppsala University, Swedish National Defence College (today, Swedish Defence University), and Karlstad University under the coordination of Professor Emeritus Sven Halldin of Uppsala University lay the foundation of CNDS. On 8 January 2020, the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS) celebrates its 10^th anniversary.  A series of events have been planned throughout the year to celebrate this occasion. 

CNDS is now providing an opportunity for Early Career Scientists (PhD students and postdocs from CNDS partnering universities Uppsala University, Karlstad University and Swedish Defence University) to apply for funding for interdisciplinary work within natural hazard and disaster science.

CNDS fellow Mikael Granberg together with his international colleagues examine more closely the idea that climate change adaptation is best leveraged at the local scale is a well- institutionalized script in both research and formal governance. 

CNDS fellow Anna Rutgersson together with her collegues Venugopal Thandlam and Hasibur Rahaman look into the recent tsunami in Indonesia and the factors leading to the mass casualties. They also examine the failure of the early warning systems, methods, and technologies in an attempt to improve future early warning systems designed to mitigate the loss of lives and property against impending disasters. This paper is timely as Indonesia has seen one of the worst tsunamis in recent years and such disasters are continuous threats for the communities. Hence, the authors stress the importance of improving and strengthening the existing early warning systems.

This book uses storytelling to share research findings from Sweden about the 2017 terrorist act on Drottninggatan, the 2018 wildfires, and the 2004 handling of the Tsunami disaster in Thailand.
 

How can we improve cross-disciplinary research environments? CNDS fellows Malin Mobjörk, Mikael Granberg, Magnus Johansson together with Camilla Berglund (Örebro University) investigated this and published a report on their findings.

Social inequalities have consequences for the everyday lives of women and girls where power relations, institutional and socio-cultural practices make them disadvantaged in terms of disaster preparedness and experience.

Turkey today is going through possibly the most turbulent period in its history, with major consequences both nationally and internationally. The country looks dramatically different from the Republic founded by Atatürk in 1923. The pace of change has been rapid and fundamental, with core interlinked changes in ruling institutions, political culture, political economy, and society. 

Volcano-induced tsunamis are thought to be rare and are therefore not commonly considered in tsunami early warning centers. Historic documents reveal, however, that Southeast Asia experiences volcano-induced tsunami hazards relatively frequently, with 17 events during the 20th century and at least 14 events during the 19th century, defining a recurrence rate of one event every 5–8 years. A volcano-induced tsunami from Anak Krakatau was anticipated, but accurate predictions were impossible owing to a lack of understanding of the processes involved. Hence, this study of the 22 December 2018 sector collapse at Anak Krakatau provides us now with important information about the precursors and processes that culminated in the disaster.

We design our infrastructures, such as bridges, to withstand catastrophic but infrequent events, like floods. Can we use similar reasoning to design our cropping systems? Researchers at SLU and Uppsala University recently received funds from Formas, for a project to support the adaptation of agriculture to climatic extremes. The project will not only take into account the crops, cropping options and weather conditions, but also the human dimension – the farmers’ risk attitude and their decision making under uncertainty.

What role does climate change play in civil unrest?

When the climate changes, it affects nature, animals, and humans.

Based on unique survey data and interviews in nineteen EU member states, CNDS researcher Charles Parker, together with his colleagues Thomas Persson and Sten Widmalm, explored the challenges the EU and its member states face in order to achieve more effective cooperation in the quest to better protect its citizens, namely in the critical field of civil protection.

The Centre for Climate and Safety, CCS, at Karlstad University (which is part of the CNDS research collaboration) invites you to a seminar day on the 4th of September on the theme Modelling of societal exposure and vulnerability connected to natural hazards. Speakers will be Jesse Rozelle and Casey Zusak from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in USA and Daniel Knös from JLT Re.

Sustainable management of natural resources requires knowledge of complex dependencies between societies and ecological systems. A new study in Nature Sustainability identifies what these dependencies are, how they arise, and what the consequences are for sustainable management. "The study contributes to our understanding of how societies interact with ecosystems, which in turn can add new insights to research on disaster risk reduction," says Daniel Nohrstedt - associate professor at the Department of Political Science, research coordinator for CNDS and one of the researchers behind the study.

Experiences from using Riskville as a pedagogical model has proven to be a good starting point for introducing and discussing the connection between urban planning and risk management. CNDS researchers at the Centre for Climate and Safety (CCS at Karlstad University) are happy to announce that these experiences have been documented and published in scientific article.

Daniel Nohrstedt, Charles Parker, Giuliano Di Baldassarre and Maurizio Mazzoleni have been awarded a 3-year grant of 4.4 million SEK for their research project The Transformative Potential of Extreme Weather Events (TRAMPOLINE).  The purpose of the project is to investigate extreme hazard events as potential triggers for changes in DRR policy and development.

The theme of this year's conference is 'Nature, Society and Scale' and includes interdisciplinary panels that reflect threshold concepts in relation to risk, disasters, crises and emergencies as well as the theoretical and methodological implications of the different disciplinary approaches, interventions, and contexts. 

An international team of drought scientists show that while many dams and reservoirs are built, or expanded, to alleviate droughts and water shortages, they can paradoxically contribute to make them worse. The study is published in Nature Sustainability. The research team behind the new study was led by professor Giuliano Di Baldassarre, Director of CNDS.

While many dams and reservoirs aim to alleviate droughts and water shortages, they can paradoxically make them worse.

This article utilizes survey data from civil protection agencies in 17 EU member states to shed light on the factors that promote national and EU-level effectiveness in civil protection and crisis management. The study found both the extent to which a national civil protection agency is organized hierarchically and adheres to a rule governed structure and the extent to which the agency scores highly with regards to a trust-based, professional culture are significantly related to the degree to which civil protection practitioners will value national and EU-level civil protection institutions. 

This year's event, hosted by the Centre for Climate and Safety in Karlstad,  focused on how we can be better at utilizing data, research and experiences in our efforts to deal with the damages and losses associated with disasters.

The event was co-organized by the Department of Earth Sciences and the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS), and it was well attended with more than 50 participants. The workshop focused on multi-hazards, compound events and cascading effects, which are gaining increasing attention in the natural hazards community.