English

Crisislab is currently involved in multiple international consulting assignments. On behalf of the World Bank Crisislab assists the Azerbaijan government in the adoption of a system of risk based supervision of fire and food safety. Azerbaijan, with its capital Baku of more than three million inhabitants, is a fast growing economy mainly supported by oil revenues. The transition of a Soviet-style system of complete supervision and control to a more efficient  arrangement which doesn’t hinder economic development is shaping up to be a challenging task. Crisislab also advises the Finnish Ministry of Transport on the costs and benefits of investments in tunnel safety.

On february 25th 2010 the Dutch programme “Government for the future” and the British Regulatory Policy Committee organized a seminar for top public servants about the developments of risk policies in both countries. The seminar was focused primarily on the (perceived) pressure of media and public which suggests that government has been granted greater responsibility in societal risk reduction. This has led to cost-ineffective risk policies and ever increasing regulatory pressure. Ira Helsloot was invited by the “Government for the future” programme to hold a presentation on the intractable citizen and his expectations of rational risk policies. You can download a report of the conference here, and the presentation of Ira Helsloot here.

On tuesday the 30th of March, Swedish researchers from CRISMART – part of the Swedish National Defense College – will visit Crisislab and the VU University Amsterdam. CRISMART and Crisislab will exchange information regarding their respective research projects and present a wide variety of topics such as: emergent groups, the organization of crisis and the permissability of physical safety risks.

On PIME 2010, the conference on Public Information Materials Exchange, Ira Helsloot delivered the keynote speech on the “intractable citizen”. Helsloot argued that citizens appear to make contradictory statements about safety when asked in a poll, but may still be senstive for rational arguments. Politicians are, according to Helsloot, not aware of this. Click here to download the presentation and click here to visit the PIME 2010 website.

Ira Helsloot and Sandra Quinn, of the University of Pittsburgh, presented a paper on citizen respond to pandemics during the annual congress of the American Political ScienceAssociation (APSA). Helsloot and Quinn conducted research as to how governments prepare themselves to possible outbreaks of pandemic diseases. According to both, governments tend not acknowledge the fact that citizens can provide valuable support as well. As a result an integral approach is required in which citizens, society and government prepare themselves for a possible pandemic. The research can be downloaded by clicking here.