Mid Sweden University

Cooperation and interaction demands digital skills. In an agile context, there is no time for learning while doing, implicating that many of the skills need to be practiced beforehand. Since exercises are one way of enhancing skills needed in crisis situations, it is important to know what skills are practiced during the exercises. This review aims to understand what skills have been practiced during exercises conducted in Sweden between 2010 and 2014. Data was obtained from 15 evaluations of exercises including multiple actors. Most exercises practiced collaboration, communication, information and shared situation awareness skills. Results showed that 4 out of 15 had a specific goal in terms of technology use. Exercises with explicit technology goals are effective as a way to change opinions about the tool in question. The participants requests additional exercises specifically targeting routines and the use of technological tools. 

Sensemaking is the process to make sense of an unknown event. Research on the contribution of materiality in sensemaking is currently an area in need of further study. The Swedish system of crisis management puts the municipality in a key position when managing a crisis. Making the municipal situation room an interesting area for research. This study focuses on sensemaking in the municipal situation room during crisis management. The area of interest is when and why digital and/or non-digital resources are being used during sensemaking. The study contributes to an understanding of how sensemaking are performed in entanglement with the materiality provided. This is important for understanding needs of exercises and needs of resources in the situation room. The study was conducted as a qualitative study where interviews and observations were used to gather empirical evidence.

This paper presents findings from ethnographic studies on situation rooms in municipalities. The purpose has been to visualize affordance for the practice pf crisis management. The study argues that organizational and material dimensions are affecting the perceived affordance. The organizational dimension needs to be have a good leadership in the situation room, be scalable, and well trained in order to infuse trust in the staff. From the dimension of materiality, it is also important with trust in the infrastructure and that they are able to handle the tools required in work. Furthermore, materiality needs to be editable, visible and scalable.

Post-crisis analysis of transboundary crises in Sweden is problematic due to limited documentation. We believe that there is a need to find tools to better understand the command and control, and to understand how the information sharing that takes place during larger crises works. This paper presents the results of an ongoing research, as well as findings about how the TETRA system is used for information sharing in transboundary crises. The data used was collected from two large emergency exercises, where Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian TETRA systems were merged. Communication in 10 shared talk groups was recorded, transcribed and analyzed. The communication in shared TETRA-talk-groups mostly focused on information about the accident, the recourses and first respond units, as well as the actions of each unit. The research also exemplifies and shows that communication within TETRA-talk-groups in transboundary crisis can give new insight into how command and control works.

Emergencies sometimes cross the borders of nations making information sharing over national borders essential in emergency management. This type of information sharing is often mediated by some kind of technology. However, appropriate and efficient cross‐border communication is more than providing technology to mediate information exchange. This study note focuses on emergency services experience of terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA)‐mediated cross‐border communication across the Norwegian–Swedish border. We applied the theory of dialect continua to analyse how people from different dialect areas understood each other. The study was based upon data gathered from semi‐structured interviews. The findings show that indeed the technological solutions had opened up new opportunities for crossborder communication but that during stressful conditions, the language differences between Norwegian and Swedish could lead to misunderstandings.

What happens when an organization requires its employees to work from home during a pandemic that needs to be managed? This research in progress article focuses on TELCO_ALPHA and the transition of their emergency operation centre  (EOC)  to  digital and distributed.  A qualitative research method approach was applied and liminality has been used as lens to investigate the shift from analog to digital. Focus has been on understanding the  transition  and how they  handled  ambiguity within the organization when  their crisis management  moved online. The transition was successful, and two areas were identified as important to this success: 1. TELCO_ALPHA used IT that the staff in the crisis organization already had experience of working with prior to the Covid-19 pandemic;  2. TELCO_ALPHA  ran  crisis management team meetings  as  they  would  run  regular business meetings. There was no new “crisis management structure” at the meetings.