Protecting society in a new era

Norwegian contingency planning and crisis management are based on a comprehensive national effort between a number of players spanning the entire spectrum of Norwegian society – civilian and military, public and private. Our society is constantly changing and developing, and with this, the social assets and technology in support of society changes as well. The threats to that society, the risks to it and its vulnerabilities are likewise constantly changing. Hence a vibrant and robust research community plays an important role in establishing a sound basis of knowledge and expertise upon which to develop Norwegian contingency planning and crisis management. This is accomplished through illuminating the dilemmas faced by policy makers and administrative agencies, proposing appropriate measures of action and responses, and contributions of knowledge and expertise to aid in policy making. Research provides up to date, realistic, critical and nuanced expertise on the functioning of Norwegian societal security and contingency planning. In this issue we present some of the findings from FFI’s research in the area of societal security and selected key research results from the ‘BAS’ project series on the protection of society.1 FFI was a pioneer in carrying out research in civil preparedness, and with its BAS series of projects FFI broke new ground in what would later be referred to as research on societal security. Research in this field continues to develop at a number of Norwegian universities, colleges, and institutes and societal security has become established as a specific course of study at several institutions of higher learning. It remains a key area of research for FFI. The long-term aim of the BAS projects is the realisation of a thoroughly developed concept to protect the population and society in general and to support the on-going prioritisation of protective measures. The thrust of today’s BAS research examines major events and incidents that could impact Norway and which would require coordinated contingency planning and crisis management across differing sectors and levels. Certain types of crises would necessitate civilian-military and public-private cooperation, and as such, would require careful premeditation. We wish to contribute knowledge and expertise and convey as much as possible of our research findings to the public for the public good. However, precisely because this research does cast a critical view to the nation’s crisis management and emergency preparedness and helps in pinpointing vulnerabilities, it is necessary to shield some of our findings. The research group for the BAS project program is interdisciplinary in nature and consists of researchers from different fields and disciplines, including political science, social anthropology, chemistry, physics, information science, and engineering. The group cooperates with several other research groups at FFI, among them people working in the fields of long-term planning for the Armed Forces, terrorism research, cyber security, and protection from explosives, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. 1 The project series is called Protection of Society, in Norwegian “Beskyttelse av samfunnet” - BAS