Municipal risk management : implications of the use of different risk tools

Abstract

The municipalities are part of an overall emergency and risk management system in Norway. The municipalities have a sole responsibility for daily social welfare and safety at the local level. The Supervisory Authorities‟ (SA) tasks are to guide and inspect how municipalities conduct emergency and risk management. The intention of the thesis is to contribute knowledge for improving the quality of municipal risk management. The main research question addressed in this thesis is: How does the use of different risk tools influence risk management in municipalities? The risk tools that are analysed and compared are Risk and Vulnerability Analysis (RAV) and Mini Risk Analysis (MRA). Part 1 Part one covers the main research question and background, addressing the research as a whole and considering both theoretical and methodological issues common to the articles presented in part 2. Theories of planning, organisation and risk have given a wide variety of perspectives with which to examine the tools. Rational and communicative planning perspectives have provided a useful way of analysing the different approaches to municipal risk management revealed in the empirical material. In 1994, the Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DCPEP) made the Risk and Vulnerability analysis guideline (RAV), which is still a risk tool recommended for use in municipalities. RAV can be considered as a rational planning approach due to an underlying assumption of having an overview of all possible risks and their consequences. RAV is used within a top-down strategy, where the top management and experts conduct the analysis. The Mini Risk Analysis guideline (MRA), developed in Klepp municipality in 2002, is a risk tool made to fit a municipal context and is thus of interest to this research. MRA shares elements with a communicative approach. It is mostly used in a bottom-up strategy where the middle and street level bureaucrats in the municipal organisation conduct MRA as a tool for assessing daily risks. This is a qualitative study based on a case study design. The context is the municipalities Klepp and Time, who use MRA and RAV respectively. Klepp has developed MRA. Time uses the ordinary RAV ...