Mid Sweden University

This study investigates how business intelligence (BI) affects decision-making processes and the basis for decisions. Therefore, the inquiry includes literature from the field of BI and interviews with three Swedish agencies. It concentrates specifically on three fundamentals of BI-driven decision-making: data quality, data analysis and the human factor. The results emphasise BI’s impact on decision-making and interrelated processes. Although BI does not reduce the volume of decisions, it enables a decision-maker or organisation to control and monitor the decision basis, which suggests that decision quality increases if the decision concerns issues that rest on statistics and facts. Based on theoretical and empirical findings, this paper contributes to an increased understanding of the impact of BI on decision-making at Swedish agencies.

How do EU member states communicate risks to their citizens? In this study, we define risk communication as the information provided by different levels of government to citizens regarding possible future crises. The questions serving as departure points for this study are as follows: How is the administrative system for risk communication set up in the countries studied? How the different risk communication campaigns are (provided that they exist) embedded in the larger administrative context? How is risk communication strategy formulated in each country and what kind of threats are emphasized? In order to tackle these questions, we examine the risk communication strategy of eight countries: Sweden, Finland, Germany, England, France, Estonia, Greece and Cyprus. Our data consist of governmental web sites, publications, campaigns, as well as other modes of communication, such as videos posted on YouTube, with questions centering on institutional actors, methods of delivery, content, and effectiveness. We acknowledge that risk communication aims at supporting vulnerable populations and evening out imbalances, but at the same time we flesh out the power dimension of risk. In our analysis, we search for reproduction of norms and social inequality in risk communication practices. The results show that some patterns emerge regarding the way different EU countries convey information to the public, but they do not hold strictly to geography or administrative system. Digital media are the foremost vehicle of risk communication and the message generally conveyed is geared towards traditional, middle class households with the main language of the country as their first language. Volunteer organizations are present in all the countries in question, though not at the same degree. The conveyance of “self-protection” guidelines implicitly places the responsibility of protection to the individual. The results also show that in some countries, materiality has become more prevalent than the social dimension of risk in the message the public sector conveys, and that there is a move from focusing on risk to focusing on security.

This paper develops a model to support the optimal choice of an airport as a base for the flying vehicles that are operated to extinguish wildfires and forest fires. Based on experiences from the two largest wildfires in Swedish history, this study models the optimisation as a balanced transportation problem. In both cases, the model selected the airport that is closest to the fire area. If the capacity of the chosen airport was insufficient to host all of the flying vehicles, then the model added a second airport which is also nearby the wildfire area. The cases demonstrate that the total cost of the operation is lower when the extinguishing work is concentrated in an area that has a short distance between the airport and the fire, the fuel depots and the pilots’ accommodation. Improved access to relevant data in the context of crisis management by air could allow for the inclusion of additional parameters and correct data in the optimisation model, which could in turn provide more comprehensive decision-making support.

It is not only in recent decades that sustainability has gained importance in terms of society’s resilience, as, even300 years ago, the necessity of treating natural resources in a sustainable way was a matter of concern. This paperaims to enhance both knowledge of the history of sustainability as a concept and understandings of the role ofsustainability culture in societal resilience. The study juxtaposes historical challenges and considerations regardingsustainability with today's issues of society’s resilience. The arguments compare the importance of sustaining forestsin the past to the importance of undisturbed electricity supply in the present, both of which represent criticalresources. To this end, the study applies the concept of culture as a theoretical framework. The results provideevidence of the importance of a cultural orientation and action system in the context of sustainability by highlightingsocietal challenges associated with essential resources in both the past and present. The paper contributes insightsinto the main difficulty associated with sustainability, namely that it is a complex concept with myriad influences.The elusive, systemic nature of sustainability means that humanity needs to create a culture of sustainability tocollectively learn from history, integrate sustainability thinking into everyday life and work with creativity andcourage for the future.

The reliability of infrastructure that is critical to society's functionality, survival and progression has gained significance for both national security and research because of its large-scale and interdependent nature. However, the theoretical basis of the relatively new research field of critical infrastructure is incomplete and the common parlance about the underlying concepts is ambiguous. This article addresses this issue and presents the results of a substantial review of scientific literature on the concepts of systems, infrastructure and governance. The results demonstrate that the concepts encounter a common challenge in characterising their key elements, structures and processes because of their recursive nature. The multi-level character of critical infrastructure systems provokes governance to systemically address the properties of adaption, emergence and entropy which the complex system-of-systems exhibits. This article contributes with both a conceptual study of the terms system, infrastructure and governance and a detailed review of the state of the art regarding these concepts in the current scientific literature to an enhanced understanding of the theoretical foundations of the associated fields. Subsequent research could interrelate other concepts, such as vulnerability, resilience, sustainability and feedback with the provided state of the art. 

Regional airports constitute an important precondition for supply chains of goods and public services and particularly those of time-critical transports by air. However, common approaches for estimating the effects of airports on the regional economy have overlooked this essential role. This paper analyzes the interconnected role of a regional airport as a hub of critical infrastructure by applying a holistic system perspective to a Swedish case. Departing from a conceptual model, which was developed with soft systems methodology, the analysis provides novel insight into vital societal functions that are interconnected with aviation. Insights from interviews with stakeholders enrich the system model and thus provide suggestions for further developments of economic models that include the value of critical infrastructure for societal resilience.

This paper outlines a soft systems method approach to model a national preparedness planning procedure for the case of an electrical power shortage. Through the model, we provide a new perspective on enhancing and understanding the joint decision-making environment for the actors involved in the planning procedure, as well as its underlying power structure. By a process of abstraction from the current implementation, a core root definition is presented which provides a generic systems view that can be a useful concept for the study of similar contexts. An action model dedicated to determining meaningful and valid activities is derived, providing insights for the improvement of collaborative emergency response planning in general. The paper, thus, aims to contribute to the communication and cooperation between actors and stakeholders in the development of appropriate decision processes and decision support in the context of emergency preparedness.

This paper develops an analytical framework to assess information in planning for critical infrastructureprotection (CIP). Critical infrastructure concerns various societal functions that ensure the daily life,endurance and progress of societies. Thus, CIP involves a considerable number of actors in a multi-levelplanning that relies on inter-organisational information sharing. Based on a Swedish case of CIP, this studyaims to foster information assessment and management that bridge the inherent conflicts between informationsharing and information security in CIP. Analyses of the information alongside the Swedish STYREL processfirst exemplify crucial deficiencies in the inter-organisational, national emergency response planning and thenspecify a set of dimensions and attributes as baseline for assessing information and information processing inCIP. Four stages in the Swedish approach cause a filtering and altering of information that affect the qualityof decisions alongside the process and the emergency response plan that relies on them. By assessing theinformation basis in this large-scale approach, the paper contributes evidence-based foundations forinformation management in inter-organisational settings, such as the multi-level planning for CIP.

Infrastructure developments depend on decision makers' perceptions of the particular policy issue and a preferred future state. The complex relationship between accessibility and rural development and the long periods from problem recognition to transport infrastructure realisations bring further uncertainty into regional planning. Therefore, government and public administration tend to rely on narratives to explain the policy issue and to transfer their perspectives into the policy process. However, oversimplified narratives unduly limit the understanding of the problem and so the choice of solutions. This paper aims therefore to contribute to an understanding of the recognition of accessibility and transport infrastructure as a policy problem for sustainable regional development in rural areas. It investigates the narrative that emerges from local officials' perceptions about a future society, reasons for sustainable growth and the collaboration at the local and regional levels in central Sweden. The analysis details the four key perspectives of the narrative: local people, work and leisure, an urban neighbourhood and public transport services. The findings stress the narrative's lack of oversight and inclusion that accounts for societies' heterogeneity. In particular, the analysis expounds a remarkable faceless story that conveys a prevalent lack of understanding of stakeholder needs and the role of critical infrastructure for societal development in rural areas. 

This study seeks to enhance current understandings of the risk communication challenges associated with theinformation-related means employed in cyber space to exert inappropriate influence, which frequently focus onparalyzing people and undermining stability. These means can be part of a hybrid warfare strategy located in thegray zone between the poles of peace and war, which indicates the long-term and subtle character of such a strategy.Maneuvers to conceal invasive interventions that mask activities, confuse responses, and disguise actual intentionsconstitute particular challenges. This paper presents the results of a literature review that applied a snowballsampling approach and concentrated on uncovering the threat landscape and recognition of the gray zone. The resultshighlight the emergence of information and cyber conflicts, including state operations and discreditation, along withspecific techniques, such as trolling and bots, in the Swedish context and beyond. The findings illustrate somechallenges for risk communication in information and cyber warfare and their implications for research and practice.  

This paper demonstrates a multi-disciplinary co-creation approach to explore local governance of future regional development in remote areas. This study aims to increase the understanding of factors that can accelerate or hamper regional development. In particular, the inquiry focuses on local decision-makers’ perceptions about a future society, regional cooperation, and reasons for the influx of people, businesses and industries. The results reveal discrepancies and similarities between local perceptions and regional necessities. The study thus contributes valuable insights about crucial issues for future development of remote areas, such as strengthening local identities so that local communities fit together in a region appearing as a complete entity to potentially interested parties.

The protection of infrastructure that is critical to society’s functionality, survival and progression has gained significance because of its large-scale and interdependent nature. This complex system-of-system (SoS) imposes extensive requirements on governance efforts to foster critical infrastructure protection (CIP). This paper uses the kaleidoscope for integrative system analysis (KISA) to investigate a Swedish approach for CIP against power shortages, called STYREL. Based on multiple sources of evidence, such as documents with regard to the case, interviews and a survey with involved experts, the analysis focuses on the system of emergency planning and the usage of the resulting plan. The results deliver insights into the governance of the multi-level planning, including issues regarding policies, the management and operation of STYREL, and accelerating problems in the adaption, emergence and entropy of the SoS, during and between process iterations. Since this large-scale approach largely fails to involve the private sector to enhance the resilience of the society, this proceeding results in uncalculated consequences. In addition, the current design of the approach hampers transparency and evaluation, which poses obstacles to the cultivation of mutual trust, collective learning and a shared understanding as well as proper risk communication with the wider public. 

Even beyond the context of critical infrastructure protection, complex planning situations involve several views on and interests in problems underlying the planning. These views are often interrelated with stakeholders bringing various concerns to both the planning itself and the plan’s future utilisation. Complex, real-world situations in particular challenge scholars in building appropriate research strategies and selecting adequate scientific approaches. Therefore, interdisciplinary research problems can require an adaption of traditional research paradigms to different facets of intricacy. However, debate on scientific approaches regarding how to gain knowledge has been perpetual. This paper contributes to this debate and provides a multi-perspective kaleidoscope for complex and interdisciplinary research. This kaleidoscope aims to support a selection of appropriate research strategies in accordance with a given research problem. For this purpose, the kaleidoscope helps gradually focus the problem. It begins with an assembling of research disciplines, continues with selecting adjacent research areas and completes the framework with applicable methods. As an example of implementation, the study further presents a concrete application and adapts the kaleidoscope to a complex research case. This case, called STYREL, represents Swedish response planning that is dedicated to ensuring swift response during a power shortage event. This planning process is concerned with anticipated decisions, which can quicken decision-making during emergencies, particularly during power shortages. This case can also serve as a metaphor, because designing a multi-perspective research strategy for interdisciplinary research may similarly require thorough consideration of possible alternatives and their complex combinations in advance. Both circumstances come furthermore with a constant need for argumentation and communication. For this, the paper contributes a flexible scientific frame of reference. This multi-perspective kaleidoscope, which is applicable to both theoretical and empirical complex research problems, facilitates communication about the selection process of a research methodology among the research community.

With the growing importance of enhancing modern society’s resilience, planning for critical infrastructure protection has become essential. However, such national planning must contend with many types of uncertainty. This paper characterises sources of uncertainty that are associated with a lack of knowledge, as exemplified by Swedish planning of emergency power supplies. The planning under investigation concerns civil protection from the negative effects of a power shortage. A decision process is intended to support this national strategic management goal by identifying and prioritising electricity consumers who are critical to society at the local, regional and national levels. The analysis of related documentation yields three sources of uncertainty (S) interrelated with this multi-level planning (MLP) for emergency response: (S1) the planning process in general, (S2) the decision-making process in particular and (S3) the direction and guidance alongside these processes. Interviews with decision-makers reveal a detailed specification of these sources of uncertainty. The results thus provide a solid basis for further goal-directed improvement of national MLP approaches. Moreover, this specification contributes to scholarly debate on the systemic effects of sources of uncertainty due to a lack of knowledge. Lastly, the findings constitute a thinking framework that is suggested as a foundation for analytical work in similar complex planning environments as well as for evidence-based communication to the wider public concerning risks and resilience.

Large-scale and long-term planning imposes extensive requirements on governance efforts regardless of whether it involves public organisations, private organisations, or both. The proportions of such planning entangle many actors and stakeholders as system components within and around a complex system. These system components and conditions in a complex planning environment introduce a diverse variety of strategic objectives into the planning. This study investigates how strategic objectives can affect the governance of complex planning systems, particularly in the context of national critical infrastructure protection. For this purpose, this thesis concentrates on a national planning procedure, STYREL, which Sweden has recently implemented for the case of power shortages. This case involves various actors from the national, regional and local levels who act on behalf of both public and private organisations in a planning process with four-year intervals, and it thus constitutes a relevant subject for this study. The investigation entailed the collection of evidence from documents and interviews. First, publicly available Swedish documents regarding the case provided an understanding of the planning. Second, interviews with decision-makers who are entrusted with this planning at municipalities and county administrative boards as well as with a few planners from power grid providers offered a deeper comprehension of both the proceedings in practice and the strategic objectives involved in this complex system for planning of critical infrastructure protection. Particularly, the findings resulted in several conceptual models that demonstrate these understandings in more detail. A soft system model visualises the problem situation and contains several elements, such as the system components, interrelations and conditions. Moreover, a multi-level planning model specifies sources of uncertainty in the planning and decision-making process that are associated with an insufficient alignment of strategic objectives in the STYREL case. These decompositions of the Swedish planning environment – both horizontal and vertical – further enabled this study to identify significant parameters of the systemic conditions and strategic objectives involved in such complex planning environments that challenge their governance. The findings of this study suggest that the Swedish process is not yet fully developed. The investigation particularly indicates that a better alignment of strategic objectives is necessary to ensure a selection of adequate goals and means that advances the future usability of the produced plan, which in turn would legitimate and strengthen this complex planning process for critical infrastructure protection.

Integrative system analysis requires a tool that facilitates both an investigation of systems from a holistic perspective and research that scrutinizes particular aspects of a specific system while retaining a holistic understanding. This paper proposes such a tool – a novel, multi-perspective kaleidoscope that constitutes a conceptual framework for integrative system analysis. This theoretical frame of reference synthesizes the results of a previous literature analysis that yielded a detailed conceptualization of the terms system, infrastructure and governance in the realm of critical infrastructure protection (CIP). The multi-perspective kaleidoscope for integrative system analysis (KISA) considers four perspectives: system, infrastructure, process and governance. These four perspectives are founded on three layers that mirror the ability of the perspectives to adjust the special focus on the micro, meso or macro level of a system of interest. The presented KISA model contributes a systemic perspective that can guide the exploration of complex issues in society to acquire beneficial, multi-faceted knowledge and a multi-perspective understanding. The integrative system perspective that this study originates will be a valuable tool for a variety of assessments in the context CIP and beyond.

This paper develops a model for analysing systemic implications of strategic objectives in the context of national emergency response planning for the case of an electrical power shortage. Drawing on evidence from the Swedish approach, STYREL, the study emphasises the need for a thorough consideration of the various interests that are involved in such a complex system of national multi-level planning. This model provides a novel approach for analysing strategic objectives in complex planning environments, thereby offering a context for a constructive dialogue about strategic objectives, reachable goals and appropriate means among actors who are involved in such planning as well as the stakeholders it affects. Even beyond national critical infrastructure protection (CIP), the contribution of this paper is twofold: it outlines a complex problem for operations research in general and suggests a systematic approach for examining strategic objectives in complex planning environments in particular. Hence, this paper encourages a discussion of systemic implications of these various interests and an enhancement of collaboration and mutual understanding to facilitate decision-making in public and private strategic management. 

Critical infrastructure systems—such as transportation—are the backbone of society. Infrastructuredevelopment can thus be acknowledged as a common societal concern in the field ofgovernance, and its recognition as a policy problem is crucial to proper decision making. This studyaims to build an in-depth understanding of the multi-level system concerned with transportation andapplies a soft systems methodology to structure the investigation. The system analysis and conceptualmodelling rests on publicly available documents and policies, group meetings and a workshop withstakeholders from the local, regional and national levels. The paper provides a thorough analysis ofthe Swedish transportation system through public policy and the perceptions of municipal officials. Inaddition, it proposes a novel conceptual framework of the transportation system, including a detaileddiscussion of stakeholders, activities and perspectives. Although transportation is vital for manystakeholders, improving only transport infrastructure does not guarantee regional growth. Therefore,the proposed framework constitutes a novel basis for constructive dialogue among concerned partiesregarding improvements to transportation. Thereby, the paper provides an understanding of asociety’s transportation system that can be used to inform agenda setting for critical infrastructuregovernance. Further discussion in the scientific community and with officials entrusted with publicadministration could further validate and deepen the proposed understanding of the perspectivesand constraints in the examined context and beyond.

The protection of infrastructure that is critical to society’s functionality, survival and progression has gained significance for both national security and research because of its large-scale and interdependent nature. Critical infrastructure can be viewed as a complex, socio-technical system-of-systems that imposes extensive requirements on governance efforts to foster critical infrastructure protection (CIP), regardless of whether it involves public organisations, private organisations or both.

This dissertation investigates how systemic thinking can develop understandings of CIP and its governance. For this purpose, the dissertation presents research that was conducted in the context of an unexplored Swedish governance approach for CIP against power shortages.The dissertation consists of a three-part thesis and six peer-reviewed publications.

Part A of this thesis presents the results of a substantial review of scientific literature on the concepts of systems, infrastructure and governance. Because of their recursive nature, the concepts encounter a common challenge in characterising their key elements, structures and processes. The multi-level character of CIP provokes governance to systemically address the behaviours of adaption, emergence and entropy which the complex system exhibits. Apart from contributing nuanced knowledge of systems, infrastructure and governance, Part A provides a novel frame of reference for research in the area in the form of a kaleidoscope for integrative system analysis – KISA.

Part B presents the key results of a case study on the Swedish Styrel approach. The investigation is based on an examination of documents that relate to the case, interviews with 66 responsible experts and a survey among all 21 County Administrative Boards and 10 power grid operators that are responsible for stabilising the power grid during disturbances. The contri¬bution of Part B is threefold. First, it originates an extensive representation of an unexplored case of CIP governance. Second, it offers a new comprehen¬sion of practical challenges in CIP governance due to the complex nature of the system and the entangled processes. Third, it provides empirical evidence that indicates areas for development of CIP governance practices.

Part C presents the results of the synthesis of theoretical and practical findings. It coalesces perspectives of critical infrastructure and system protection to elaborate on the concept of systemic governance. Fundamentally, systemic governance of CIP integrates the nexus of governance, management and leadership to address challenges regarding key properties of complex systems: entropy, emergence and adaption. Part C defines the theoretical contribution of this dissertation, namely the concept of systemic governance of CIP.

Förstudien kartlägger behovet av och möjligheten för MSB att via verksamhetsställe MSB Sandö bidra till Västernorrlands uppbyggnad av totalförsvaret och tillika utgöra en nationell resurs för detta. Analyser av hotbilden, offentliga dokument och fallstudien i Västernorrland indikerar MSB Sandös roll genom att utgöra: en unik plats, ett kompetenscentrum och ett överregionalt samverkans- och ledningscentrum. 

Various societal functions, such as healthcare, freight transports, water supplies and electricity, ensure the daily life, endurance and progress of modern societies. The protection of such critical functions requires comprehensive information processing. Based on evidence from documents on the Swedish planning process STYREL and interviews with entrusted decisionmakers at county administrative boards, municipalities and power grid operators, this study aims to crystallise information pathways and flaws to highlight information filtration and alteration. Analyses of the material reveal a set of information-flawing filters, such as information withholding or loss when sharing, information scarcity in criticality assessments and ad-hoc information creation due to scarcity. Because of these filters, the Swedish process causes an altering of information that affects the quality of decisions and the emergency response plan that relies on them. Thus, this study indicates deficiencies that relate to information sharing, information security and decision-making that pose risks to citizens and businesses.

Because of the increase in the number and scope of information security incidents, proper management has recently gained importance for public and private organizations. Further challenges in this area have resulted from new regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS), as well as a tendency to outsource vital services to subcontractors. This study addresses the lack of empirical studies in the field and focuses on information security incident management at information technology (IT) consulting firms.Specifically, it examines challenges due to their exposed position and newregulations. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides valuable insight into the experiences and challenges of Swedish IT consulting firms.Second, it proposes criteria for classifying an information security incident that can equip decision-makers with a solid and assessable basis for incident management. The results emphasize further improvements in employee awareness, incident classification, and systemic governance, thereby integrating corporate policy making, information security incident management, and information system leadership.

Failures in the power supply threaten the safety of developed countries, as they are increasingly dependent on electricity to maintain important societal functions through critical infrastructure. To protect electricity-dependent critical infrastructure, Sweden has implemented a multi-level planning, called Styrel, which involves national-, regional- and local-level actors. This study focuses on interactions among key actors and their roles in the planning as well as the Swedish crisis management system. With evidence from interviews and a survey among the actors, analyses indicate blind spots in the current proceeding, such as the reliance of the outcome of the process on the actors’ commitment to achieve a common understanding of the importance of infrastructure assets and participate in collaborations. This paper reveals that actors lack awareness, knowledge, capability and resources to fulfil their roles in the national planning for critical infrastructure protection. By highlighting interrelations, this study contributes to the international discussion of identification, prioritisation and protection of critical infrastructure to mitigate consequences of power failures for a depending society.

With its growing dependence on electricity, modern society faces the risk of cascading failureof interconnected societal functions. To protect societal functions during an event of power shortage,Sweden has implemented a multi-level planning process called STYREL, which involves national-, regional—and local-level actors. As part of the Swedish crisis management system, the regional body operatesas a co-ordinator that organises co-operation and interaction between private and public actors. Thisstudy examines the role of the regional hub in STYREL and the collaboration and co-operation betweenplanning levels. It focuses on the co-ordinator’s perspective and presents evidence from interviews and asurvey among planners at County Administrative Boards, entrusted with the supervision and executionof STYREL within their regional area of responsibility. This paper indicates that the regional co-ordinatorlacks the awareness, knowledge and resources to fulfil its core function in the national planning for criticalinfrastructure protection.

Airports provide the basal infrastructure for air-based transportation. Adequate access to time-critical transportation, in particular, can enhance the resilience of a region. However, common approaches for estimating the economic effects of an airport on local, regional, and national economies have overlooked such resilience effects. This paper examines the potential effects of airports on societal resilience at the regional level, while also considering the value of regional airports from a national perspective. It focuses on several factors that can enhance the resilience of society, such as handling the consequences of natural hazards, providing rescue services for citizens and visitors, ensuring the provision of health care in sparsely inhabited regions, managing prison and probation services, and maintaining critical processes. The results support the consideration of the resilience effects that an airport provides to the surrounding region and society in general in analyses of the social and economic effects of airports. Thereby, the paper contributes to the development of economic models that include the value of critical infrastructure for societal resilience.

Electricity is a key resource for the majority of societal functions and constitutes an important sector in the critical infrastructure of modern societies. Disturbances in power supply can have cascading effects on interdependent public sectors and ordinary citizens. However, it seems nearly impossible to completely prevent the occurrence of power shortages. Strategies to address temporary power losses are therefore essential. This paper aims to increase the understanding of national policies to manage the early consequences of power outages. Therefore, we critically review the Swedish national policy called Styrel as part of Swedish Crisis Management System. In the scientific literature, there are few examples similar to Styrel for handling emergencies in the electricity system. Particularly, we seek to discover related risks and benefits, conditions and constraints, as well as effects for specific stakeholders. We argue that the approach cannot yet be considered as fully developed. Three areas requiring improvement are identified. First, the scope and terms of the process must be specified. Second, (better) quality management seems necessary. Third, people responsible for identifying and prioritizing power consumers critical to local society need better decision aid. Improvements could facilitate risk-communication and collaboration among actors as well as decision-making and organisational learning.

This paper examines the role of regional airports in regional and municipal crisis preparedness based on evidence from a case study in Sweden. During the summer of 2018, Sweden experienced some of the most extensive wildfires in modern time. Aerial suppression, for which airports provided the essential preconditions, played an important role in extinguishing these fires. This study includes analyses of public policies that shape the Swedish airport system as well as evidence from interviews and a workshop with stakeholders. The results show that an efficiently operated network of regional airports is critical not only for crisis management but also to ensure important societal services such as health care in sparsely inhabited regions. Moreover, access toquick transportation by air is necessary for the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, tourism industry, public institutions and private businesses. Additionally intensified by effects of both the public debate on flight shame and the COVID-19 pandemic on air-based transportation, the insights arising from this study emphasise that the currently one-sided focus on the number of passengers is an insufficient foundation for the Swedish airport system to construct a resilient base for regional development, crisis management and civil defense.

This paper highlights difficulties in studying the Swedish crisis management system with a specific focus on the planning process STYREL. This process seeks to identify and prioritize vital objects in the category of critical infrastructure (CI) in order to elaborate an emergency response plan for the case of a power shortage. The concerns in this paper originate from a research project on how actors assess CI and cooperate during the process as well as which consequences the prioritization of CI pose for society and its citizens. The project employed material from document studies in addition to interviews with security officers at municipalities, coordinators at CountyAdministrative Boards (CABs), and representatives from power grid operators (PGOs). Furthermore, a survey was conducted among all CABs and the ten PGOs that are responsible for effectuating the plan within the initial phaseof a power shortage. The results reveal problems regarding the availability of relevant planning material, gaps in knowledge due to deficient continuity, difficulties in tracing particular objects during the process, and a lack of feedback that hampers evaluation and development. Thus, Swedish critical infrastructure protection (CIP) suffers from not only a shift in responsibility to regional and local actors but also a severe lack of systemic governance.

This paper highlights the difficulties in the studies of the crisis management system. Our focus is on the Swedish planning process in the case of power shortage, called Styrel. Our paper depart from a research project entitled From Authorities to Citizens and Back. The aim of the project is to increase the knowledge on the decision-making processes within Styrel with a focus on how the actors co-operate within the planning process, and what consequences the priorities of socially important objects have for society and its citizens. Methodologically, the project is based on document studies, interview with security officers in forty-seven municipalities, three coordinators at the County administrative board (CAB), and representatives for local power grid companies. Furthermore, a survey has been conducted with all coordinators at the CAB. The intended objective has also been to take part of the planning documents in order to investigate if there are any differences between how the objects were prioritized by the municipalities and how they were finally prioritized. Our experience from the study reviles problems with availability of relevant planning material, lack of knowledge due to deficient continuity at the local level regarding those responsible for Styrel, and finally difficulties in following individual objects during the planning process.

This paper highlights major methodological obstacles to studying and performing critical infrastructure protection (CIP) in general and CIP governance in particular. The study simultaneously examines a research project on and practice in the context of Swedish CIP. The complex planning approach of interest is called Styrel, a Swedish acronym for Steering Electricity to prioritised power consumers. It aims to identify and prioritise power consumers of societal importance, collectively referred to as critical infrastructure (CI), to provide an emergency response plan for the event of a national power shortage. Methodologically, the investigation uses material from document studies, interviews and a survey, which involved many actors from the Swedish case. For the analysis of the methodological obstacles, this study applies an abstracted research and development process that encompasses four steps: data collection, data assessment, decision-making and evaluation. The paper mutually maps the insights from the research project to the empirical evidence from the case study. Through this reflective analysis, the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges that significantly impede research and practice in the context of national and international CIP, for example, insufficient information sharing and knowledge exchange among parties, a lack of integrated and advanced methods, and uncertainty in policies that induces a variety of local approaches. In addition, since empirical research on implemented CIP plans is limited, this paper addresses this gap. It reveals five general obstacles for both research and practice: a) the access to high-quality data, b) the loss of knowledge over time, c) the interpretation and evaluation of processes and methods, d) the transferability and comparability of data, results and insights; whereas all culminate in 5) a lack of collective intelligence. The accumulation of these obstacles hinders a detailed assessment of decision-making for CIP and its consequences on society. For this reason, this study emphasises the need for enhancing mutual understanding among the various parties in the area of CIP while respecting relevant security issues when inventing novel methods that facilitate collective intelligence.

Supply chains and logistics play an essential role in society and must continuously adapt to market changes, customer needs and technological developments, including emerging technologies such as blockchain (BC) and smart contracts. This study reviews current literature in the supply chain and logistics field to investigate emerging trends in BC developments. The results reveal several trends, such as process and flow development, the streamlining of cross-border transactions and the use of smart sensors in logistics. This paper highlights drivers of BC developments, including costs, security, data traceability, trust and transparency. As well as revealing knowledge gaps in research and practice, this study contributes to an increased understanding of the trends in BC developments within the area of supply chains and logistics.

The paper aims to develop a set of key variables that can be used to model accessibility for informed and sustainable regional planning for sparsely populated remote areas. Based on a thematic analysis of empirical data from a Swedish case, the study extracts regional peculiarities related to the concept of regional accessibility. These peculiarities formulate a set of key variables that can be used to develop new accessibility models or expand existing ones to support decision-making at the policy design stage through a knowledge-based approach. The findings of the paper pinpoint characteristics of destinations that unpack the regional accessibility concept. The paper contributes with a fresh perspective on regional planning, addressing the often-overlooked distinct features of sparsely populated remote areas. Based on these insights, the suggested set of key variables reflects the regional peculiarities without neglecting the uniqueness of these areas. The extracted variables may be incorporated in modeling to simulate accessibility dynamics to offer contextually informed perspectives for policymakers. As a result, the findings from this paper strengthen informed decision-making concerning accessibility in planning for sustainable regional development.

The purpose of this paper is to define indicators and measures of accessibility that can support decision-makers in designing policies for sustainable regional development. The study identifies aspects of accessibility that may influence the attractiveness of certain areas for population and infrastructure investments, notably sparsely populated regions that lay outside urban environments. The paper’s findings identify which accessibility indicators are relevant to the peculiarities of sparsely populated areas thereby defining the specific system requirements for possible simulation models. Such models can generate outcomes of policy scenarios that may be used to evaluate the consequences of policy-making. To support this objective, the study identifies the theoretical basis of accessibility indicators and their modeling potentials that address the complexity of the investigated domain. This paper is an important step toward developing a feasible modeling tool capable of generating policy-based scenarios that support effective decision-making in the context of regional planning.

For traffic safety reasons, Sweden has lowered speed limits on major roads that lack directional separation of traffic. For some of these roads, regional authorities, municipalities, and other local stakeholders have sent appeals to the government opposing the implemented speed limit reductions. The appeals have mainly referred to negative effects on regional development and have suggested that the speed limit reductions be abandoned. This paper identifies the characteristics of roads where appeals against speed limit reductions have been filed and where local stakeholders claim that speed limit reductions are a threat to accessibility and regional development. The results of logistic regression modelling show that appeals are more likely for speed limit reductions on long road sections, on European roads, and in areas with a state university, and less likely in areas with high population density and areas defined as vulnerable by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. We investigated these policy conflicts using frame theory. In this paper, we identify two policy frames: speed limits for traffic safety and speed limits for regional development. These two policy frames are related to different views on how to best strive towards regional accessibility and safety goals in remote areas. The different views are likely not easily aligned by more information or facts since they concern deeper questions, such as what constitutes basic accessibility of good quality and how large risks are acceptable on the road network. This study thus uncovers not only a policy disagreement but a policy controversy in the Swedish context.

This paper provides an overview and mapping of needs and use of data related to formal risk analysis within the context of critical infrastructures, including activities of risk assessments and risk modelling as a part of preventive work against major accidents and crises. The aim is to contribute to a greater understanding of the type of data that is actually used in published sources where different risk assessment or risk analysis methods are applied for critical infrastructure protection. The study focuses specifically on the presentation of applications of quantitative or semi-quantitative risk analysis in the scientific literature within the domain of societally important services and critical infrastructures. The survey was delimited to peer reviewed research papers between the years 2010 and 2020 and resulted in a total number of 183 papers subject for evaluation. The results provide insights into the type of data that is used, missing or difficult to obtain for an application of the identified methods. To obtain a comprehensive critical infrastructure risk analysis data needs are related to three different data dimensions; geospatial topology data, socio-economic data, and infrastructure data. However, no databases are currently available with the explicit purpose to support critical infrastructure risk analysis. Even though this is not viewed as a problem in the examined papers, collecting that data is resource intensive which is a barrier for a more systematic use of formal risk analysis methods.

Disinformation regarding COVID-19 is spreading rapidly on social media platforms and can cause undesirable consequences for people who rely on such content. To combat disinformation, several platform providers have implemented intelligent systems to detect disinformation and provide measurements that apprise users of the quality of information being disseminated on social media platforms. For this purpose, intelligent systems employing deep learning approaches are often applied, hence, their effectivity requires closer analysis. The study begins with a thorough literature review regarding the concept of disinformation and its classification. This paper models and evaluates a disinformation detector that uses a convolutional neural network to classify samples of social media content. The evaluation of the proposed deep learning model showed that it performed well overall in discriminating the fake-labelled tweets from the real-labelled tweets; the model yielded an accuracy score of 97.2%, a precision score of 95.7% and a recall score of 99.8%. Consequently, the paper contributes an effective disinformation detector, which can be used as a tool to combat the substantial volume of disinformation scattered throughout social media platforms. A more standardised feature extraction for disinformation cases should be the subject of subsequent research.

Accessibility is a crucial concept in the study of social inclusion, justice, equity and security as well as the reliability of supply in societies. Research has examined factors that objectively measure accessibility, such as land-use and socioeconomics. However, such approaches often fail to include individual perceptions of accessibility. Thus, this study proposes a multi-linear regression model that focuses on both objective and subjective factors to assess municipal accessibility. In addition, principal component analysis is applied to reduce dimensionality and eliminate the problem of multi-collinearity. The paper contributes a novel model with a higher prediction rate (70.5%) than that of a traditional multi-linear regression model (58%) during an evaluation of accessibility in the Swedish context.

Information security incidents are increasing both in number and in scope. In consequence, the General Data Protection Regulation and the Directive on security of network and information systems force organisations to report such incidents to a supervision authority. Due to the growing of both the importance of managing incidents and the tendency to outsourcing, this study focuses on IT-consulting firms and highlights their vulnerable position as subcontractors. This study thereby addresses the lack of empirical research on incident management and contributes valuable insights in IT-consulting firms’ experiences with information security incident management. Evidence from interviews and a survey with experts at IT-consulting firms focuses on challenges in managing information security incidents. The analyses identify and clarify both new and known challenges, such as how the recent regulations affect the role of an IT-consulting firm and how the absence of major incidents influences stakeholder awareness. Improvements of IT-consulting firm’s incident management process need to address internal and external communication, the information security awareness of employees and customers and the adequacy of the cost focus.

STYREL is a planning process aiming at ensuring electricity supply to sociallyimportant objects during a situation of power shortage. The fact that STYREL is animportant planning process with great importance for securing the electricitysupply to important users of electricity is an opinion all the interviewees express.At the same time, there is also a consensus that the process is in need ofdevelopment and change in order to achieve the aims behind the process.The empirical study included documents, investigations, 65 interviews,participatory observation and participation in meetings and network meetingswithin the framework of the planning process. The critical review shows that thereare several areas of improvement to consider that could increase the quality andreduce the risk of important social functions becoming without electricity during aperiod of power shortage. The areas that are particularly highlighted in the studyconcern the necessity of integrating recurring feedback into the planning system,creating networks at both local and regional level to ensure that private-sector orimportant civil society actors is excluded and finally, further clarify the varioussteps and the different roles in the planning system. This can be achievedcomparing with international planning systems on critical infrastructure and withnational planning systems within the crisis management systems.

Electricity is a key resource for the majority of societal functions and constitutes an important sector in the critical infrastructure of modern societies. Disturbances in power supply can have cascading effects on interdependent public sectors and ordinary citizens (Rinaldi et al., 2001; Cohen, 2010; Ghanem et al., 2016). However, it seems nearly impossible to prevent the occurrence of power shortages. This has been evident in the aftermath of the hurricane Lee and the hurricane Maria in 2017. Because of the changing climate, an increase of hurricanes, flooding, and high river flows, are expected. The need of a national energy policy have been addressed (see e.g. Hoffman, 2015), including policy for manual power cut in the case of power shortage. The Swedish Energy Agency has developed a national policy for handling national power shortage. The policy, called STYREL is part of Swedish Crisis Management System. This paper focus on the Swedish power shortage policy, STYREL in relation to national policies in Germany and the USA. The aim is to compare the three countries policies in the event of power shortage. The focus is on the organization of the planning process, which actors are part of the process, and how the societal important users are identified and ranked. Policy networks, including actors from both public and private sector are of special interest.