As part of the project, the Crisis Research Centre is training at least 20 people in Nõmme who will strengthen the community-based crisis network being developed in western Tallinn. The network will be coordinated by the City of Tallinn through the Tallinn Municipal Police Department.

“As this is the first time we have implemented a project in Nõmme City District, we are particularly pleased that the second group also developed strong synergy and interaction between participants from the very beginning. This is one of the foundations of the long-term sustainability of our projects. Community-based civil protection only makes sense if people themselves are willing to continue developing both the field and the relationships created through it,” said Hannes Nagel, KRAKO Project Manager.

“Today’s training day focuses specifically on practical community and civil protection first aid. We are giving participants practical, genuinely useful skills they can rely on both in everyday situations and in a crisis. We are not in the business of box-ticking, the point is to teach people things they actually need when it matters,” Nagel added.

The KRAKO training programme is not focused solely on individual preparedness. Its aim is to bring together people who live and work in the area and who are both interested in and willing to support their community during a crisis, while helping to develop a functioning local network of contacts and cooperation.

“Crisis preparedness is not simply about having the necessary supplies at home and knowing what to do yourself. It is just as important to know who is around you, what knowledge and skills they have, and who you can work with when needed. Once a crisis has begun, it is too late to start exchanging phone numbers and looking for people who might be willing to help,” said KRAKO Project Lead Hannes Nagel.

During the training day, participants explored the principles of crisis preparedness and civil protection, the role of communities during emergencies, and the ways in which local residents can help identify people who may need assistance, share information and support their neighbourhoods. The practical first aid component was delivered by paramedic Andrus Lehtmets. The KRAKO programme combines local-level crisis preparedness, community cooperation and practical skills.

Training is also creating new connections for future cooperation

Feedback from the first Mustamäe training session clearly demonstrated why bringing people together is such an important part of the KRAKO project. When participants were asked, “How many new people did you meet during the training whom you could contact or work with in the future on crisis preparedness and community safety?”, nearly 92% said they had made at least one new contact. Around one third of participants identified two or three people with whom they could potentially cooperate in the future.

“For us, this is a very important outcome. A crisis network cannot simply be created as a list of names or a diagram. It has to be built around people who have actually met, spoken to one another and know whom they can turn to when needed. In that sense, the training is only the starting point. Our aim is for these new connections to gradually develop into a functioning local crisis network in Mustamäe,” said Nagel.

The strength of local residents lies precisely in their local knowledge. They know their own building, street and neighbourhood, are able to identify people and situations that cannot be understood in the same level of detail centrally, and can help share information, connect people and identify residents who may need additional support during a crisis. The KRAKO crisis network aims to strengthen local-level crisis management capacity across Tallinn’s city districts.

The panel discussion brought together Hannes Nagel, Head of the Crisis Research Centre; Orvika Reilend, Head of Tourism at the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency; crisis preparedness expert Raivo Lumiste; Heiki Soodla, Head of the Western Rescue Centre; and Jaan Ratnik, representing Tervis Spa Group. The discussion was moderated by Mirko Ojakivi.

At the beginning of the panel, participants were asked to rate Estonia’s current level of crisis preparedness on a ten-point scale. Nagel rated it at roughly one out of ten, pointing primarily to serious shortcomings in practical capabilities and the resources available to the internal security sector. According to him, both the Crisis Research Centre and the Estonian Rescue Workers’ Trade Union have been drawing attention to these weaknesses for years. “Civil protection must move from plans to actual capability, which is simply not possible under the chronic underfunding that has long characterised Estonia’s internal security sector,” said Hannes Nagel, Head of the Crisis Research Centre.

“Public authorities have all kinds of plans and concepts in place, but in a polycrisis the outcome is determined by the capabilities that actually exist. A plan is not a capability. Having a generator, for example, does not solve the problem if we have not considered where the fuel will come from during a prolonged disruption, who will maintain it, who can repair it, and how the entire system will function when one dependency after another is disrupted,” Nagel noted.

According to Nagel, crisis preparedness discussions often overlook precisely those practical and seemingly mundane details on which real continuity depends. The same applies to large-scale evacuation. Moving, receiving and temporarily accommodating hundreds of thousands of people is not merely a logistical issue, but requires transport, accommodation, catering, medical assistance, security, information, personnel, coordination and functioning local networks to operate simultaneously. In Nagel’s assessment, many of these capabilities in Estonia currently remain closer to the level of planning than to sufficiently tested and practised operational capacity.

Polycrisis does not simply refer to several crises occurring at the same time. At its core is the interconnectedness of crises and systems: disruption in one area affects others, these effects can spread across sectors, and may in turn amplify the original problem. “In a polycrisis, the greatest challenge is not simply that we are facing multiple problems at once. The real difficulty lies in the way these problems interact, reshape one another, and transform the system in which we operate,” said Hannes Nagel, Head of the Crisis Research Centre.

This perspective is particularly relevant to the tourism sector, which depends simultaneously on transport, energy, infrastructure, labour, digital systems, public-sector capacity, and people’s sense of security. Crisis preparedness therefore cannot focus solely on what may happen within the tourism sector itself. It must also take into account the systems on which tourism depends and the relationships between them. “Risk analysis in tourism can no longer be limited to asking what might happen to the sector itself. We also need to consider what may happen to the systems on which tourism depends, and how disruptions in those systems may interact and reinforce one another,” Nagel noted.

In his presentation, Nagel also addressed how major crises can alter the normal operating logic of entire sectors and require organisations to use existing resources, networks, and relationships in new ways. He highlighted Ukraine as an example, where the tourism sector has taken on additional societal functions alongside its traditional role. “In a crisis, there is not always time to build entirely new systems. Adaptation often depends on how effectively we are able to reorganise and repurpose the systems and capacities that are already in place,” Nagel said.

Nõmme starts from a different position when preparing for crises than, for example, Haabersti or Mustamäe. Although the district also has apartment buildings, it is characterised by extensive areas of detached and private houses and a garden-city-style spatial structure. According to Tallinn’s data, Nõmme has considerably more single-family homes than apartment buildings. This means that crisis preparedness must also take into account people who are more dispersed across the area, different types of buildings, local roads and the needs of a wide variety of households.

“While Nõmme does have larger apartment buildings, it is predominantly an area of detached houses, which creates its own challenges for crisis preparedness. In a large apartment building, it may be possible to reach dozens of people through a single stairwell, whereas in areas of detached houses, people and resources are more dispersed. It is precisely in such situations that local people who know their street and neighbourhood become valuable: they can help identify needs, relay information and support the municipality’s activities,” said Anne-May Nagel, co-founder and researcher at the Crisis Research Centre.

During the training day, the Nõmme District Government introduced the principles of crisis preparedness at city and district level, as well as its expectations for the development of the local crisis network. The Crisis Research Centre addressed the role of communities in civil protection and covered the basic knowledge required in this area, while paramedic Andrus Lehtmets focused on practical first aid. These three perspectives – local government arrangements, the capacity of communities to act, and practical skills at individual level – also form a key part of the KRAKO training programme.

Led by the Crisis Research Centre, the pilot project is building a network of local residents in western Tallinn to strengthen community crisis preparedness. Training sessions in Haabersti, Mustamäe and Nõmme aim to improve participants’ personal preparedness as well as their ability to assist others and support their communities and city districts.

“Additional responsibilities assigned to local authorities have not always been matched by sufficient resources. When a crisis strikes, staff shortages directly affect their ability to assist residents. This makes it essential to establish connections with local people who have the skills and willingness to support their communities before a crisis occurs,” said Hannes Nagel, KRAKO Project Lead.

The training covered the principles of crisis preparedness and the state of civil protection in Estonia. It also presented findings from the Crisis Research Centre’s 2024 survey on crisis preparedness in Väike-Õismäe. Participants discussed how local residents’ knowledge and skills could be put to use and what role each person could play in supporting their neighbourhood.

The panel will explore the expectations that different actors – the state, local authorities and citizens – have when it comes to civil protection. Can people manage on their own during a crisis until help arrives? How much can families and neighbours rely on one another? And are households actually prepared with enough emergency supplies to last for at least seven days?

At the Opinion Festival, we will discuss where responsibility for crisis preparedness lies – with the state, local government, apartment associations or individuals themselves – and, more importantly, how to turn expectations and good intentions into practical action.

“Crisis preparedness should not be a privilege available only to those who have more money, space, time and knowledge. Individuals are an important part of preparedness, but they are not the whole system. Preparedness is also about much more than what people buy and store at home. It is reflected in the kind of cities, communities and living environments we create,” said Hannes Nagel, Head of the Crisis Research Centre.

Denmark is not a seismically active country in the same sense as Italy, Japan, Turkey, or the Philippines. Major tectonic plates^A do not meet there as they do in many of the world’s most dangerous earthquake zones. Denmark is located within the Eurasian Plate, in an area generally considered stable, but this does not mean that earthquakes are impossible there. Even within more stable parts of the Earth’s crust, stresses accumulate and may occasionally be released as minor or moderate earthquakes.

At the same time, Denmark’s earthquake risk is considered low in global comparison. Even in the case of a stronger earthquake, estimated to occur on average once every 475 years, ground motion in Denmark would remain relatively limited, and the largest possible natural earthquake is currently estimated at a magnitude of 5.3.¹ For this reason, a major earthquake is not treated as a separate key crisis scenario in Denmark’s national risk assessment, as its likelihood in Denmark and the surrounding area is low.² This provides a fairly precise framing of Denmark’s situation: an earthquake is a real natural phenomenon there, but based on current knowledge, a devastating major earthquake is highly unlikely.

On 20 May 2026, at 16:14 local time, an earthquake occurred in the Køge Bay area, with an estimated magnitude of 3.9. The earthquake’s epicentre was located approximately 37 kilometres southwest of Copenhagen (see Figure 1), and it was recorded by all seismic stations in Denmark, as well as by stations in southern Sweden and Norway.^3,4

The Crisis Research Centre is launching the KRAKO project (Knowledge and Resilience Alliance of Key Organisers) in Tallinn to support people’s ability to cope better in emergencies and crises, and to help carry crisis preparedness knowledge forward at the local level. The project is part of the Crisis Research Centre’s wider 2026 programme, which focuses on empowering community crisis preparedness through practical discussions, learning activities and local-level cooperation.

KRAKO does not approach crisis preparedness only as a matter of supplies, guidelines or institutional responsibility. Instead, it treats preparedness as part of a broader question: how communities can better understand their strengths, vulnerabilities and opportunities for cooperation. The project’s central starting point is that official plans alone are not enough in crises — people also need knowledge, skills, contacts and trust to rely on in difficult situations.

“Crisis preparedness often starts with very simple things: whether people know what to do in the first hours, whether they know other active people in their community, and whether they are able to communicate information calmly. KRAKO helps strengthen exactly this local level, where official preparedness and people’s everyday capacity to act come together,” said Hannes Nagel, Head of the Crisis Research Centre.