Webinar: Transboundary Resilience 10th June 2021

This webinar combines a set of research talks on transboundary (or cross-border) resilience with facilitated discussions between practitioners, industry, policy and researchers.

The 21st Century is the century of transboundary crises. The 2006 European blackout, the financial crisis of 2007-8, Ebola outbreaks, the wildfires of 2017 and 2018, and the COVID-19 pandemic are examples of transboundary crises, ‘characterized by the potential to cross geographic and functional boundaries, jumping from one system to another’. They have shaped, and will continue to shape, social life, and they are exacerbated by the planetary climate change crisis. Poverty and inequality, strained health services, struggling economies, disrupted mobilities, extreme weather events are felt across the boundaries of countries, organisations, and communities. Transboundary crises are ‘the ultimate nightmare’ for crisis managers, because they cut across multiple domains and have multiple manifestations, escalate rapidly, and are hard to predict in onset and evolution. There are multiple actors with conflicting responsibilities, and there are no ready-made solutions. It is, therefore, important to strengthen transboundary resilience, but how? Please join us at this webinar to know more and discuss!

Please also see this Call for Papers for a Special Issue on Transboundary Resilience for the Journal of Homeland Security and Crisis Management.

Register here.

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

14:00 – 14:15      Introduction: Transboundary Resilience in a 21st Century of Transboundary Crises
Marie Christine Bonnamour (PSCE), Anouck Adrot, Monika Büscher (PSCE), Frank Fiedrich, Eric Rigaud and Marcus Wiens

14:15 – 14:30      EU Policy Perspectives (To be confirmed)

14:30 – 14:45      Transgovernmental Solutions: Insights from the 1st European Disaster Response Exercise 2016-17 (EDREX)
Simon Hollis, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm

14:45 – 15:00      An Example from the CORE project (To be confirmed)

15:00 – 15:15      Q&A & Discussion

15:15 – 15:30      Transboundary Societal Resilience
Kees Boersma, Vrije University of Amsterdam

15:30 – 15:45      High Reliability Management: Practices, Not Just Principles
Emery Roe, University of California, Berkeley

15:30 – 16:00      Q&A & General Discussion

16:00 – 16:30      Synthesis & Next Steps
What are the main opportunities and challenges for transboundary resilience from your perspective? What actions can PSCE take to support innovation?

16:30      Close

Background

The 21st Century is the century of transboundary crises. The 2006 European blackout, the financial crisis of 2007-8, Ebola outbreaks, the wildfires of 2017 and 2018, and the COVID-19 pandemic are examples of transboundary crises, ‘characterized by the potential to cross geographic and functional boundaries, jumping from one system to another’ (Boin and Rhinard 2008). They have shaped, and will continue to shape, social life, and they are exacerbated by the planetary climate change crisis. Poverty and inequality, strained health services, struggling economies, disrupted mobilities, extreme weather events are felt across the boundaries of countries, organisations, and communities.

Transboundary crises are ‘the ultimate nightmare’ for crisis managers (Boin 2019), because they cut across multiple domains and have multiple manifestations, escalate rapidly, and are hard to predict in onset and evolution. There are multiple actors with conflicting responsibilities, and there are no ready-made solutions.

It is, therefore, important to strengthen transboundary resilience. But how?

Resilience is a contested concept, because sometimes, asking communities or organisations to be resilient can be a way of delegating responsibility for recovery from the state to individual actors who may be ill equipped to carry the burden (Feldman 2015). However, the notion of societal resilience can enable a more equitable and collective forms of resilience. It ‘recognizes the potential for adaptation and transformation of systems, … the self-organizing principles of emergent response networks, [and the] capabilities of local organizations and communities (Boersma 2021). When this is conceived to encompass preparedness and training, it can be a powerful approach.

The European Union has pioneered many transboundary resilience innovations. It is characterised as a security community-building institution (Bremberg 2015), and the new European Union Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change (2021) is a timely way of taking responsibility for future challenges. It highlights the transboundary nature of climate related crises and calls for deeper political engagement and partnerships.

But the complexity of transboundary crises demands governance structures that can integrate a multitude of responders quickly with the pressures of chaotic conditions (Wenger, Quarantelli, and Dynes 1990). New European transnational exercises exemplify the power of transgovernmental networks where ‘the complexity of transboundary disasters creates the main practical impetus of cooperation’ (Hollis 2020). However, tensions between centralized and decentralised or networked approaches that build on European concepts of subsidiarity (Boin and Rhinard 2008) make cooperation difficult. To resolve these tensions, new frameworks are emerging that explore ‘netcentric’ styles and ‘collective action’ (Boersma et al 2010, Blondin and Boin 2020). Mechanisms like the EU Civil Protection Mechanism explicitly enable a joint European approach, providing timely and precise geospatial information, support for coordination, and humanitarian aid and environmental pollution recovery. Examples this can bridge between diverse emergency management systems in collaborations between diverse sovereign states that make up the European Union its partner countries (Zwęgliński 2020).

Appropriately appreciating the significance of trigger events early, swiftly developing a realistic sense of the severity of (potential) transboundary crisis and leadership are particularly important aspects of successful response efforts (Hermann and Bruce 2009). For this, lessons from studies of the security cultures of ‘High Reliability Organisations (HRO)’ (Roe 2009) can provide inspiration and guidance for the evolution of societal transboundary resilience for the 21st century. HRO are organisations like airports, nuclear power stations, hospitals that recognise that in a risk society (Beck 1992), accidents are a ‘normal’ part of life (Perrow 1984) and the only way to manage risk is to build cultures of security that actively generate resilience.

As transboundary and planetary crises shape the lives of current and future generations, this workshop seeks to support cooperation across the boundaries of research, practice, and industry.

This workshop is part of the development of a special issue publication for the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. If you are interested in contributing to the workshop and/or the special issue, please contact m.buscher@lancaster.ac.uk. The call for papers for the special issue is available at the link the journal above.

 

References

Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

Blondin, D. and Boin, A. (2020) Cooperation in the Face of Transboundary Crisis: A Framework for Analysis. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 197-209.

Boersma, K. and Larruina, R. (2021) Restoring the medical supply chain from below. The role of social entrepreneurship in the production of face masks during the COVID-19 crisis. In: Adrot, A., Grace, R., Moore, K. and Zobel, C. (Eds.) Cross-Border & Transboundary Resilience Proceedings of the 18th ISCRAM Conference – Blacksburg, VA, USA May 2021.

Boersma, K., Wolbers, J., & Wagenaar, P. (2010) Organizing Emergent Safety Organizations: The travelling of the concept ‘Netcentric Work’ in the Dutch Safety sector. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Conference, Seattle, USA, May (2010).

Boin, A. (2019) The Transboundary Crisis: Why we are unprepared and the road ahead. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management (27)1: 94-99.

Boin, A. and Rhinard, M. (2008) Managing Transboundary Crises: What Role for the European Union? International Studies Review 10(1):1-26.

Bremberg, N. (2015) The European Union as Security Community-Building Institution: Venues, Networks and Co-operative Security Practices. Journal of Common Market Studies 53(3):674-692.

EU Commission (2021) Forging a climate-resilient Europe – the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change. Available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2021:82:FIN [Accessed 23 April 2021]

Feldman, J. (2015) “MSNBC Guest: Stop Using the Word ‘Resilient’ to Describe Katrina Victims”, Mediaite, 29 August.

Hermann, M.G. and Bruce, W, D. (2009) Transboundary Crises through the Eyes of Policymakers: Sense Making and Crisis Management. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management (17)4: 233-241

Hollis, S. (2020) Crisis management in Europe: exploring transgovernmental solutions to transboundary problems. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 18, 231–252.

Perrow, C. (1984). Normal accidents: Living with High risk technologies. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Roe, E. (2009) Preventing Transboundary Crises: The Management and Regulation of Setbacks. Review of Policy Research, 26(4): 457-471.

Wenger, Dennis, E. L. Quarantelli, and Russell R. Dynes. 1990. “Is the Incident Command System a Plan for All Seasons and Emergency Situations?” Hazard Monthly, March 10.

Zwęgliński, T., Arculeo, C. (2020) Risk Management as a Tool of the Civil Emergency Planning in the United Kingdom — Comparison With the Polish Approach. Internal Security 12(2):55-82.

Speakers’ Bios

 

Kees Boersma is an associate professor at the department of Organization Sciences at VU University Amsterdam. He is the project leader of the NWO research project ‘Smart Disaster Governance’. His areas of expertise are systems and computer engineering, innovation studies, history of science and technology, science and technology studies, organization and public administration studies, higher education studies, surveillance studies and criminology, urban studies, and crisis and disaster management.

 

 

Marie-Christine Bonnamour is General Secretary of the Public Safety Communication Europe Network and the founding member of DS SQUARIS as well as its main shareholder and CEO.

Marie-Christine Bonnamour started her career as a lawyer at the Bar of Brussels where she specialised in European Law. Aware of the fact that legal issues were only part of her clients preoccupations when dealing with European Affairs, she set up SQUARIS in 1999 to enlarge the services offered to those of her clients wanting to make their voice heard at European level.

She holds a Masters degree in European Law as well as a Masters degree in International Law. She has worked for both the European Commission and the European Parliament and she has been leading large NGOs as well as many large-scale EU funded projects.

She is used to working with care and confidentiality on sensitive commercial and political issues and her very deep knowledge of the EU institutions makes Marie-Christine Bonnamour one of the best EU Affairs specialists on the Brussels’ scene.

 

 

Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology, Director for Research at the Department for Sociology, and Associate Director at the Centre for Mobilities Research, at Lancaster University, UK. She is Chair of the Research Committee for the Public Safety Communications Europe Network. Her interdisciplinary research on mobilities explores low-carbon transport innovation, the informationalization of emergency response and risk governance, IT ethics in information sharing, and infrastructuring equitable urban futures. She leads research in range of national and international projects (DecarboN8, GREAT, BRIDGE, SecInCoRe). She has published many articles and books, including Ethnograpies of Diagnostic Work, Mobile Methods and Design Research. Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives. She edits the book series Changing Mobilities (Routledge) with Peter Adey.

 

 

Frank Fiedrich is Professor at Wuppertal University.

Nach seinem Studium des Wirtschaftsingenieurwesens promovierte Herr Professor Fiedrich an der TH Karlsruhe. Dort arbeitete er u.a. im Sonderforschungsbereich „Starkbeben“ und im Graduiertenkolleg „Naturkatastrophen“.

Vor dem Wechsel nach Wuppertal arbeitete Herr Professor Fiedrich vier Jahre am „Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management“ der „George Washington University“ in Washington, DC. Hier führte er unter anderem Forschungsprojekte für die amerikanische Katastrophenschutzbehörde zur Notversorgung der betroffenen Bevölkerung nach Großschadensereignissen durch.

Die Professur wird im Rahmen des Programms „Rückkehr deutscher Wissenschaftler aus dem Ausland“ von der Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung (http://www.krupp-stiftung.de) gefördert.

 

  Simon Hollis is Associate Professor in Crisis Management and International Coordination at the Swedish Defence University.
 

Emery Roe, Senior Researcher, Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California, Berkeley

 

Emery Roe, a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM) at UC Berkeley, has served as senior researcher on several of CCRM’s initiatives, including the NSF-funded Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure Network (RESIN) project prototyping a new framework for risk assessment and management of interconnected critical infrastructures. His book based on this research, co-authored with Paul Schulman, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as Reliability and Risk: The Challenge of Managing Interconnected Infrastructures. Emery’s other books include Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (2013, Duke University Press); High Reliability Management: Operating on the Edge (with Paul Schulman, 2008, Stanford University Press); Ecology, Engineering and Management (with Michel Van Eeten, 2002, Oxford University Press); and Narrative Policy Analysis (1994, Duke University Press). He is a practicing policy analyst and has also managed large-scale development programs. His blog is: When complex is as simple as it gets (https://mess-and-reliability.blog/)

 

 

Call for Papers

Cross-Border and Transboundary Resilience

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management

SPECIAL ISSUE Click here for more Detail

Guest Editors: Anouck Adrot, Monika Büscher, Frank Fiedrich, Eric Rigaud and Marcus Wiens

Special Issue Overview

When disaster strikes, initial aid is frequently provided by local and adjacent communities in the affected country due to geographic proximity. What happens, however, when a disaster-hit area lies along a border and the nearest region capable of helping is in another country?

Establishing cross-border coordination for crisis prevention, intervention and recovery can pose a number of challenges. It requires collaboration of a number of actors that are diverse culturally, and otherwise. Language barriers, organizational interoperability issues and diverse legislative requirements are potential obstacles. Other variables include: compatible technical equipment, common legislative frameworks, mutual communication procedures, and trust between the first responders on both sides of the border. Without all this, misunderstanding and discord could occur.

Crises which span national borders (such as financial collapse or pandemics) can also test and change the unique historical, economical and geographical identity of a region. This can result in a new attitude toward and sense of partnership with the citizens on the other side of the border. With cooperation can come trust and respect.

Additionally, in the last two decades, virtual social and economic connections — enabled by advances in technology and globalization — transcend geography to promote transboundary cooperation during crises. As a result, multiple affected countries that do not share physical frontiers can coalesce to respond to a crisis anywhere in the world.

While dynamic and highly relevant areas of emergency management, the roles of frontiers in global crises and transboundary collaboration remain understudied.

This special issue of the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (JHSEM) seeks to attract new research in borderland and transboundary resilience, especially with regard to critical success factors, obstacles and potential levers of cross-border and international cooperation in the context of crisis management. This issue seeks to answer: how can nations strengthen their resilience in the midst of a crisis by addressing intercultural and inter-organizational challenges from a scientific point of view?

Topics

Disasters and emergencies can occur in a large spectrum of border and transboundary contexts that can include but are not restricted to:

  • Emergencies and disasters that involve populations, equipment, critical infrastructures and services originating from various countries, regions or territories
  • Situations that involve the mobility or migration of population (ranging from local to international population movement, such as during evacuation) or that imply the risk of political and social conflicts between regions and countries
  • Response to natural disasters that affect various territories separated by social, political or topological borders (e.g. floods, blackouts, pandemics, heat waves)
  • Situations that require transnational and transregional cooperation between different countries, including management from distant locations (such as pandemics)
  • Humanitarian activities, logistics and organization of disaster management to disabled and vulnerable populations (such as tourists and the elderly)
  • Pan-national planning and preparation of events that could occur in one country or another (such as European management of frontiers closing during the Covid-19 pandemic)

In addition to these suggested subject areas, JHSEM welcomes contributions that investigate challenges of cooperation and responses to disaster-related emergencies in border regions, in particular by exploring:

  • Cultural differences among various populations
  • Models of human and (inter-)organisational behavior (e.g. network analysis, agent-based modeling and simulation)

Finally, we welcome innovative methodologies that have been rarely used in the examination of emergency response to cross-border events:

  • Archive & historical analysis, prospective analysis and data analysis
  • Systematic reviews of phenomena related to transboundary crisis management

Original and high-quality research that is neither published nor currently under review by any other publication is welcome. Papers must be written in English and comply with the mission of the Journal. All papers submitted for inclusion in this special issue will be peerreviewed in accordance with the standard procedures of the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript via the electronic submission system. Please select “Cross-Border Resilience” for article type. The publication timetable is as follows:

Important Dates

Deadline for submission: June 15, 2021

Author’s first notification: October 1, 2021

Submission of revised paper: November 15, 2021

Notification of final acceptance: January 15, 2022 (

Publication date: March 1, 2022

For further enquiries, please contact Frank Fiedrich (fiedrich@uni-wuppertal.de).

Guest Editors

Anouck Adrot
Assistant Professor at Dauphine Recherches en Management (DRM)
University Paris-DauphineEmail: anouck.adrot@dauphine.fr
Monika Buscher
Director for Research
Department of Sociology
Lancaster UniversityEmail: m.buscher@lancaster.ac.uk
Frank Fiedrich
Chair of Institute for Public Safety and Emergency Management
University of WuppertalEmail: fiedrich@uni-wuppertal.de
Eric Rigaud
Associate Professor at Centre for Research on Risks and Crises (CRC)
Centre MINES ParisTechEmail: eric.rigaud@mines-paristech.fr
Marcus Wiens
Head of Risk Management Research Group
Institute for Industrial Production
Karlsruhe Institute of TechnologyEmail: marcus.wiens@kit.edu

 

Date

Jun 10 2021
Expired!

Time

1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

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Location

Online
Category

Organizer

CeMoRe
Website
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cemore
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