Dismantling boundaries between citizen volunteers and emergency authorities – cocreating emergency response in Denmark

This paper discusses the cocreated emergency response to the climate-related incident of coastal flooding in Jyllinge, Roskilde Municipality, Denmark. The field work revealed an otherwise undescribed phenomenon and unprecedented degree of cocreation of emergency response as citizen volunteers were involved at both the managerial and operational level in the response to coastal flooding caused by Storm Ingolf. This entailed the co-seating of citizen volunteers with the official response incident command in the authorities’ command post. The paper discusses the phenomenon of professionalism in relation to cocreating emergency response with citizen volunteers and develops a framework of analysis for the phenomenon. The paper concludes that cocreation of emergency response is indeed possible depending on the dynamics of inclusion in the situation and on the maturity of the various actors to take part in professional responsibility and to share the privilege of professional exclusionary closure. The paper shows that the ability to involve citizens in professional response should be considered part of emergency response professionalism.