Today, May 11, we release our first professional paper written by Per Becker, Research Manager at Training Regions Research Center at Lund University.

“Understanding dependencies - Why safety, security and sustainability are increasingly challenging for cities and regions addresses the problems we are facing in today’s changing society”

The increasing effectiveness and efficiency of modern society is not only beneficial, but also liable for new or increased vulnerabilities. The seemingly ever-increasing complexity of modern society is in other words bringing new challenges for safety, security and sustainability. At the heart of these challenges lay an incremental increase in dependencies between escorts, infrastructures, stakeholders, etc, making it more and more difficult for stakeholders to grasp and manage risk to critical flows and functions. Without acknowledgeing this process and its consequences for the resilience of cities and regions, there is a grave risk that we allow society to slowly drift into danger. Creating a resilient society is a collective endeavor, as most stakeholders depend on each other in fulfilling their responsibilities. Stakeholders thus need to come together to map and address various types of critical dependencies. Although the complexity of modern society is likely to continue to increase for the foreseeable future, there are innovative ways forward to promote resilient cities and regions.

Download the full paper here: Vol 1, No 1, Understanding interdependencies  and watch the movie in which Per is interviewed about his paper.

Untitled from Training regions on Vimeo.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
Logon to our linkedin page and post questions for Per to answer.
You have until Tuesday night to post your questions for Per.

Henrik Tehler, Training Regions Research Center and associate professor at the Department of Fire Safety Engineering and Systems Safety at Lund University gave a presentation on critical dependencies on April 18 for the members of Training Regions. The presentation gave a good insight into the research done in the field of critical dependencies and which models that can be used to identify critical dependencies.

The presentation was follows by a discussion in which the members exchanged views on the topic and Henrik Tehler provided valuable input.

The panel discussion is scheduled for Monday 14th of May between 9.00 and 10.30.
The panel will be discussing “Training practitioners and students for climate adaptation action: lessons and options”.

Training Regions Secretary General, Magnus Qvant will take part in the discussion together with Hartmut Fuenfgeld, Research Fellow, Climate Change Adaptation Program, RMIT University, Australia; Bernhard Barth, Human Settlements Officer, UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya; Barry Benedict, NSF funded CAMEL CC training network, Chatham University, United States and Rob Melnick, Executive Dean, GLobal Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, USA.