Prepared Together: Stronger Together
The CBSS-funded project Prepared Together: Stronger Together has completed its first year, revealing differences in urban residents' threat perceptions and preparedness levels across Latvia, Finland and Germany.
Article by Dr. Ieva Birka*, Director of the Future Leaders Academy at the Stockholm School of Economics Riga, Doctor of Political Science from the University of Latvia, and Lead Researcher on two research projects at the University of Latvia’s Advanced Social and Political Research Institute.
The CBSS-funded project Prepared Together: Stronger Together has completed its first year, publishing the results of a survey on threat perceptions and disaster preparedness among urban residents.
Funded by the CBSS’s Project Support Facility (PSF), the project focuses on improving disaster and crisis preparedness in Latvia, Finland, and Germany. Led by researchers from the three countries, the project aims to assess how well citizens and governments are prepared for a range of threats, including natural disasters, cyberattacks, and military crises.
A key outcome of the project was a comprehensive survey conducted in Riga, Helsinki, and several German cities, which assessed threat perceptions and preparedness levels among urban residents. The survey gathered over 1,000 responses in each country.
The survey revealed significant differences in how citizens from each country view potential threats. For example, Helsinki residents ranked climate change and its associated risks, such as storms and floods, as their top concern. In Riga, however, the primary concerns were disrupted supplies (62%) and the country’s economic situation (61%). In contrast, Germans were more pessimistic about the likelihood of future crises, with 59% expecting a major disaster in the next ten years, compared to 39% in Helsinki and only 31% in Riga.
Preparedness levels also varied significantly. In Riga, only 7% of respondents reported having essential supplies for 24 hours, while 12% of Helsinki residents reported similarly low levels of preparedness. Across all three countries, there was a strong demand for more information from authorities, with 69% in Riga, 73% in Germany, and 80% in Helsinki expressing a need for further guidance on how to prepare for emergencies.
The findings have already been presented and discussed at the Helsinki Security Forum.
The project also enabled the finalisation of an academic publication by Alexandra M. Friede, titled ‘Security, First of All, Begins at Home’: How Finland, Latvia, and Germany Prepare ‘Ordinary People’ for Crises, which compares how the three countries prepare their citizens for crises.
The initiative aligns with the CBSS’s Safe and Secure Region priority, which aims to enhance preparedness through inter-regional cooperation in response to an increasingly unstable security environment. As military preparedness rises in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the project underscores the importance of a “total defence” approach, where all sectors of society are involved in preparing for both man-made and natural crises.The project team is composed of researchers from Latvia—Dr. Ieva Birka and Dr. Didzis Kļaviņš—Finland’s Dr. Mikael Wigell, and Germany’s Alexandra M. Friede. The team remains committed to continuing their work on disaster preparedness and collaborating with national and local authorities to address the gaps identified through their research.
*) The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), its officials, or its Member States.