Lunds universitet/Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi
Abstract
The modern day society, and especially cities, are dependent on infrastructure and the continueous flow of goods, services and people. Some of these infrastructures are critical for the others functioning on a normal pace and have been coined as critical infrastructures. This paper addresses the protection of critical infrastructures in four different municipalities in Sweden through the directives from the MSB and the EU-directive from 2008. With theories of risk society, modernity and resilience, as well as modells such as comprehensive emerhency management, the work of the protection of critical infrastructures in Sweden is examined. In several other countries such as USA and Japan, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been used as an important tool for analysing, describing and determine the risks and threats that hazards, terrorist attacks and major accidents pose on the critical infrastructures and society.The main questions posed in this paper was therefore to examine how these four municipalities adress the protection of critical infrastructures, how they use GIS in this work and what potential and risks GIS have in being incorporated in emergency management by officials
