The risk-based approach to dimensioning of Arctic rescue services: Real and perceived emergency response in Greenland and Svalbard

There are specific hazards in the Arctic that challenge both everyday activities as well as emergency response operations and rescue operations. Thus, both Greenland and Svalbard face challenges when it comes to emergency preparedness. While the Arctic hazards they face are mostly similar, there are significant differences in their responses to these and their effectiveness.
Creating robust emergency preparedness in Greenland and Svalbard is difficult. Greenland is a large island of 2 million km2, around 410’000km2 of ice-free areas, 56’000 inhabitants and around 70 towns and villages. Svalbard is a remote archipelago of 61,022 km2, 3000 inhabitants in three larger settlements, located some 830 km from Greenland and 950 km from the Norwegian mainland.
From a normative standpoint, we would like to see a risk-based approach to dimensioning of emergency preparedness. Risk-based dimensioning aims to create consistency between available resources and the need for response capacities that matches identified hazards. However, there are many factors influencing stakeholders decision-making on the level of preparedness, such as available resources, experiences from rescue operations, overall activity in the area, and the need to prioritise between different public goods. The paper aims to study the specific Arctic hazards in Greenland and in Svalbard, the emergency preparedness structures established in Greenland and in Svalbard to handle these hazards, and the degree to which we can describe the approach at Greenland and Svalbard as risk-based approaches to emergency preparedness. The findings in this study stem from literature studies, discussions with key stakeholders within emergency preparedness in the two regions and own observation.
We start with an introduction to Greenland and Svalbard, followed by presenting the most relevant Arctic hazards, the two regions experiences with rescue operations and maritime activity. We then continue with a short presentation of available rescue resources in the two regions, followed by our conceptional framework of risk and emergency response. Our methodology for data collection is then presented, followed by our findings and discussions before we present our conclusions and recommendations.