Training:
Training is a task we must solve together
The establishment of sturdy and secure flows is a crucial part of the field of societal security, and more and more attention must be paid to it. Promoting functional cities and regions is however nothing that one single actor can establish on their own.
Instead, it is a task that the business community, the public sector and academia must solve together through training. Training for societal security encompasses everything from identification, prevention, research, development, and testing, to preparation, planning, training and evaluation.
Many actors must cooperate
So – who needs this training? The answer is probably many do, and often not only the groups usually targeted for these kinds of activities. To create elasticity around capacity and skill, many actors must cooperate and new target groups must be identified.
If we can do this, we will be able to secure the functions of cities and regions, also under pressure and when significant accidents and catastrophes occur. Of course, they will need education and training to fulfill this new task, not only one time, but repeatedly and continually.
With this new, collaborative, approach it will be obvious that the society has a lot more resources than first meets the eye. If they are properly trained. And to train them, we will need a development of completely new, target-group-adapted, concepts. We also need to increase standardization to make it possible for all parties to meet in an efficient way in the training arena.
The traditional way to manage society is through laws, rules, and regulations and uniform standards. This also requires education and licensing. A more modern, and perhaps better, way is to develop people’s competence and capacity through training. This way, they will be able to take on responsibility and solve problems on an entirely new level.
This training has the added benefit of keeping professionals and their competence up to date, long after their basic formal education has been completed. Training for professionals also adds the possibility to convey the latest results and breakthroughs in research and development actively into the society. Today, these advancements often remain stuck within the academic world.
Training, as described here, increases the ability of decision makers and key personnel to prevent and manage risks and crisis, not the least by establishing conditions for cooperation which is so crucial to the outcome.
But it requires an international arena with a qualified focus on the problems of cities and regions.