Analysing analyses-An approach to combining several risk and vulnerability analyses

The Swedish county council Region Skane is developing work processes for iterative risk and vulnerability analyses. This will be arranged in a distributed bottom-up manner, where analyses are performed and results reported through three hierarchical levels, ending at a central unit within the county council organisation. That unit is responsible for three tasks: 1) Establish a summary of the risks and vulnerabilities on the county level, 2) Send relevant information from the findings to national governmental agencies, and 3) Feed back relevant information to organisational units on lower levels. Based on the Region Skane case we describe some critical aspects of communication associated with such hierarchically organised systems of risk and vulnerability analyses. We also briefly discuss possible approaches to managing the critical aspects. Our results indicate that it is not enough to simply add the reports from different lower units. It is necessary to compare and merge the analysis results from lower levels.