Analyzing risk culture and emergency

This presentation will offer insight in the results from an analysis of risk culture and awareness of emergency management plans on ten campuses around in Denmark. Observations, shadowing and qualitative in depth interviews will be applied in order to investigate culture and/or cultures concerning the ways safety, risk and emergency management is perceived and practiced in everyday life among both students, teachers, managerial staff and service personnel. The field work will be carried out in February and March 2018.
In a previous desktop study we have investigated written emergency management plans from the same higher education institutions, though our aim of this fieldwork on site of the campuses is first of all to investigate the relation between written plans, often produced by only few people with a risk management perspective on the one side, and the rest of the organization on the other. In addition we wish to understand how the different groups of members in the organizations view their own role and responsibility concerning the creation of a safe and secure environment and to what extent they understand and interpret the role of their own involvement. In particular, we wish to investigate if the recommendation for involving all members of an organization, stressed by the research on safety in open public institutions, is practiced at the campuses where we conduct the study
The study is the first part of a broader study of institutions’ work with emergency management in the Danish public sector, and it takes its point of departure in the sector of higher education. There is a specific focus on practices for working with emergency management concerning threats, violence and attacks. One main aim of the study is to investigate how researchers and representatives from the institutions in the sector can co-produce policies, best practices and guidelines in matters of emergency management to be worked with in the future.