SPRM - Systemic Pandemic Risk Management

The Corona Commission's third main finding states: "There is a need to develop a sector-wide system that captures how the risks in the various sectors mutually affect each other." In other words, the COVID-19 strategy must depend on the assessment and management of systemic risk. The Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2019 by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction states bluntly: "Realizing the systemic nature of risks, and the opportunities afforded by new approaches and new concepts of risk will be the central challenge of the first half of the twenty-first century." The SPRM project, in collaboration with Kristiansand Municipality, Sørlandet Hospital, Center for Integrated Crisis Management (CIEM) from the University of Agder and two disaster medicine centers from Sweden and Italy, has created a method and technological solutions for assessing and handling systemic pandemic risk. Systemic risk models are developed in "participatory modelling" in workshops with carefully selected experts with relevant expertise in societal sectors affected by the pandemic. The risk model is analyzed and quality assured together with the experts. The analysis methods identify risk scenarios, risk subsystems and find out the most potent risks. Strategies that are most effective and practical are developed against the most potent risks. The SPRM project contributed along the way to the handling of COVID-19 in the Agder county. In the final phase of the project, risk models were created and strategies against future pandemics identified. The SPRM project gained international attention in particular through the report Addressing Complex and Cross-Boundary Challenges in Government: The Value of Strategy Mapping, published by The IBM Center for the Business of Government.