The conference concluded ten months of dedicated project activities, led by Malmö University (Sweden) in partnership with NGO Poruch (Ukraine) and the NGO Crisis Research Centre (Estonia). The goal of the project was to establish a network of local-level crisis managers across the three countries, focusing initially on the Points of Invincibility, a resilience hubs initiative launched in Ukraine in 2022 in response to Russia’s large-scale attacks on critical infrastructure.

“Points of Invincibility is a Ukrainian initiative aimed at helping local communities — both in urban and rural areas to continue daily life and work as normally as possible. As Sweden and Estonia also seek tangible tools to support local communities in the face of various crises, bringing together best practices and lessons learned is essential,” said Dr. Tom Nilsson, project coordinator from Malmö University.

The project focused on sharing experiences and mapping both success stories and the challenges municipalities have faced. “An important part of this project was the research conducted to understand how Points of Invincibility, as resilience hubs, function as tools in building resilience,” noted Anne-May Nagel, researcher and co-founder of the NGO Crisis Research Centre. “At the conference, preliminary research results were presented, and further feedback was gathered from participants,” she added.

The protection of critical infrastructure is one of the most important needs for modern society’s security, and Ukraine serves as a model for the rest of Europe. Modern critical infrastructure is inextricably linked to electricity and software, both of which are important targets for an aggressor state that employs a wide range of tactics.

“Instead of focussing solely on directly critical infrastructure last year, attackers increasingly targeted supply chains, compromising specialised software suppliers and developers. This approach enables the enemy to remain undetected and gain access to critical systems via less secure supply chains,” explained Brigadier General Oleksandr Potii, Head of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP), who also presented the Crisis Research Centre with a newly published analytical report summarising Ukraine’s defensive cyber activities.

“After more than a decade of war, we’ve seen how important it is to protect critical infrastructure, whether it’s transport hubs or power plants. This is significant because modern societies are extremely vulnerable to power outages and other essential services,” said Hannes Nagel, head of the Crisis Research Centre. Mr Nagel accepted a commemorative coin from Oleksandr Potii, Head of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, on behalf of the Crisis Research Centre, symbolising the start of cooperation between the organisations.

The seminar featured presentations by local officials from various regions of Ukraine. “It is critical to have representation from various regions because Ukraine is a large country and local authorities’ experience varies slightly depending on their location. The war has affected all regions of Ukraine, but people near the frontline or in Western Ukraine have different needs in certain areas,” said Dr. Mariia Tyschenko, head of NGO Poruch (Ukraine), a PIMA project partner, at the seminar. However, crisis centres, or Point of Invincibility as they are known in Ukraine, are spread across the country and provide critical support to the population during the war.

“Estonia and Sweden are both actively developing civil protection, including crisis centres. However, in order to achieve the best possible outcome, we must learn from the Ukrainian experience. This is what the PIMA project is all about,” said Anne-May Nagel, co-founder of the Crisis Research Centre. ‘The need for cooperation was also important – in Ukraine, companies, local governments, the Ukrainian Rescue Service, NGOs, and the community itself all contribute to setting up, opening, and maintaining the centres – and we need similar solutions in Estonia and Sweden to make the centres work in practice,’ she added.

The aim of the project is to provide municipalities in the three countries with practical guidance on how to create and develop such facilities involving multi-level actors to foster adaptation to turbulent times.

Malmö University is the lead partner of the project, with whom the project partners are mapping best practices at the local level in creating and developing crisis facilities for communities. A key partner in the project is the Ukrainian NGO Poruch, which has extensive practical experience in supporting communities through points of invincibility since the start of the Russian invasion.

“We are very honoured to have the NGO Poruch involved in this project, as their experience is invaluable. Their work on the ground in Ukraine with points of invincibilities has helped many people to cope in crisis situations. The practical experience of setting up and running the centres is an invaluable learning material,” said Anne-May Nagel, PIMA Project Coordinator at the Crisis Research Centre.

The PIMA project is funded by the Swedish Institute, whose contribution will enable municipalities in three countries to share their experience and best practices. The project will run until the end of November 2025 and will produce materials to help local authorities develop more effective crisis facilities for communities.

Photo: the first working group meeting of PIMA project in Malmö on February 4 (KRUK, 2024).

PIMA (Points of Invincibility for Multi-level Adaptation) combines local experience from Estonia, Sweden, and Ukraine to build and run crisis support centres as effectively as feasible. In Ukraine, such centers are known as points of invincibility.

These centers provide people with basic services such as charging their electronics or accessing the internet if their home’s electricity fails. If the heat goes out, there’s somewhere to stay warm. It’s also a chance to meet other people and learn new skills, such as first aid.

In Sweden and Estonia, resilience shelters are also being developed for various crisis circumstances, and it is critical to recognize that such centers are required in specific crises. We are excited to collaborate on this new project with Malmö University and the Ukrainian NGO Poruch. The project is funded by the Swedish Institute.

You can read more about the ongoing Estonian-Ukrainian-Swedish cooperation project here.

Photo: meeting at the Estonian Embassy in Kyiv (Порyч, 2024).

In Ukraine, points of invincibility have been established as locations where citizens can obtain emergency aid in the event of a failure of critical utilities such as electricity, water, or heating. They are areas where people can recharge their phones, remain warm, and get important government information about what is going on. “The points of invincibility are also highlighted by Ukraine itself as an important element in the continuation of social resistance and resilience in a war that has lasted nearly three years,” said Hannes Nagel, Head of the NGO Crisis Research Centre. “Estonia and Sweden have begun to establish a network of such points of invincibility in order to improve civilian crisis preparedness. At the same time, there is a critical need for cross-border sharing of best practices in the field, as well as the preservation of the fundamental concepts of common points of invincibility.”

The PIMA project’s goal is to bring together specialists in charge of local level points of invincibility in Estonia, Sweden, and Ukraine in order to begin developing a network to achieve the above mentioned objectives. The Ukrainian partner NGO Poruch, which has been operating in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, plays a vital role in the project, both in community centers and among the civilian population as a whole. “In the project, we are developing a concept for points of invincibility that will assist local planners and policymakers in building on worldwide best practices when establishing centres. To gain insight into this, the project will also include research, in which we will map the current state of play at the local level using case studies from three countries, highlighting both successful solutions and areas of concern,” said Mariia Tyshchenko, Director of NGO Poruch.

“One of the project’s most significant outcomes is a concept paper on points of invincibility. This concept will serve as a policy brief, but more importantly, as a tool for municipalities to better understand both starting, equipping, and operating the points, based on best practices for engaging local communities and dealing with various aspects of vulnerability, such as people with special needs, children, or the elderly,” said Tom Nilsson, Associate Professor at the Department of Global Political Studies at Malmö university.

Malmö University will be the lead partner in the PIMA project, which will carry out majority of activities during the spring and summer of 2025. The project is funded by the Swedish Institute.

This year’s annual conference, held for the tenth time at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at the University of Södertörn, focused on the relationship between citizens and the state during and after crises. The two-day conference brought together researchers from many corners of Europe to share the latest knowledge on citizen-state relations in times of crisis.

“The presentations covered a wide range of crises, from locals coping with the refugee crisis on Lampedusa Island, to cooperation between different levels during the earthquakes in Turkey, to the management of the COVID-19 in Romania. At the conference, we shared Estonian local experiences of citizen involvement in crisis management, with the example of the response to the May 2022 coastal pollution in Vormsi and Hiiumaa in Western Estonia,” said Anne-May Nagel, researcher at the Crisis Research Centre who gave the presentation. “Hiiumaa and Vormsi stood out for their broad community involvement in the response to this crisis, and our research was looking into factors that enable municipalities to involve citizens in the response to a pollution crisis,” said Nagel.

Involving citizens in crisis management is a topic that is receiving increasing attention in the scientific literature, and is associated with local resilience. However, it is a rather complex area and various obstacles and issues can arise when practically involving the community, such as the fact that the community does not usually include people with specific training for a particular crisis. “It is very important that the municipality is able to inform its residents of the proper course of action in a timely manner, and to set up a support system that allows people to come to assistance. For example, in Hiiumaa and Vormsi, people were quickly informed on how to clean up pollution in the most effective way, an instructional video was made, and information was constantly updated on which areas still needed to be cleaned up,” Nagel said.

🧡  The participation of a representative of the Crisis Research Centre at the conference at the University of Södertörn was supported by the National Foundation of Civil Society. We are grateful for the support.

Hannes Nagel, the head of the Crisis Research Centre, delivered a presentation at the conference that specifically examined the decision-making procedures employed during the initial phase of the Saaremaa municipality’s corona crisis. This phase refers to the period preceding the official declaration of a state of emergency. Furthermore, we obtained significant input from the conference regarding the final research paper.

“The dissemination of research findings on an international level is an essential part  of comprehending the evolution of crisis management systems. Although our issues may appear distinctive, crisis managers throughout Europe frequently encounter comparable obstacles. The sole solution is to comprehend the issues scientifically and, of course, to endeavour to resolve them,” noted Hannes Nagel, CEO of the NGO Crisis Research Centre and a junior researcher at Tallinn University.

In addition, we got useful feedback from the conference to develop the paper further.

Photo: 2nd POMAA conference (Crisis Research Centre, 2024).

In the third web meeting of the project, led by Malmö University, we started with a discussion of the homework from last time. Representatives of local authorities from Estonia, Georgia and Sweden participating in the project thus shared their experiences with post-crisis reflection and audits. We also talked about the need for an easy-to-use document tool for local authorities to analyse crises.

After discussing the homework, we were given an inspiring presentation by Dr Oleksandra Keudel. Her presentation “National resilience in local hands? Contribution of Ukrainian local self-government to managing crisis due to the Russian full-scale invasion” led to a number of questions from the participants, such as whether and how the preparation of local governments in Eastern and Western Ukraine differed.

Dr. Keudel focused on the importance of collaborative governance several times in her presentation and stressed that it has been one of the key factors of Ukraine’s resilience at the local level. This means that the role of local communities and volunteers in empowering local governments has been very important in Ukraine.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 28 as a hybrid meeting to take place simultaneously in Tallinn, Malmö, and Batumi. At this meeting, we will summarise what we have learned from the project and map the main obstacles on the road to post-crisis governance.

The results of the project will also be used to put together a concept for post-crisis learning at local level in the three countries, which will help to map both the current situation and the main obstacles to the development of the field in the participating countries.

🟧 Malmö University is the main partner of the TPCL project, which main activities will be carried out within spring 2024. The project is funded by the Swedish Institute.

Photo: May 2 meeting (Crisis Research Centre, 2024).