Taking connectedness seriously. A research agenda for holistic safety and security risk governance

Abstract

The geopolitical situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused instant concern regarding the security of European petroleum infrastructures, with the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines visible manifestations of the weaponization of energy infrastructures. In this article, we use the sudden shift in the security situation around Norwegian petroleum infrastructures as an example to highlight the intersection between security and safety risk problems, and the relationship between different analytical levels in the subsequent risk governance. The example presents an opportunity for analytically capturing complexity and connectedness in a way that enables empirical study and conceptual development. We argue that there is a need for a reoriented research agenda for how safety science deals with multi-level, multi-actor and cross-sectoral risk governance, if safety science is to be able to study, theorize, and ultimately contribute to the solving of some of our major contemporary societal risks. To this end, we suggest a theoretical framework for holistic risk governance, that facilitates the empirical study of and theoretical development around risk problems that contain both safety and security dimensions, and crosses sectoral borders and political-administrative levels, including the international level. Utilizing conceptual lenses from the social sciences, the suggested theoretical framework emphasizes intra-organizational dimensions of risk governance, intersectoral coordination challenges, and multi-level dimensions of risk governance under processes of securitization. This framework should have relevance beyond our empirical example, and may serve as a steppingstone for further scholarship dealing with the governance of complex, inter-organizational, cross-sectoral, multi-actor and multi-level risks at the intersection between security and safety.