A chemical accident can cause damage in individuals, groups or entire communities. The injury may concern human life, property or the environment. An accident can affect a large part of society and requires cooperation between the actors involved. Different stakeholders need to be informed, but it is not certain how a message should be delivered and who should do it. The study's purpose is to study risk communication generally, as exemplified by the accident in Halmstad September 21, 2012, when a fire broke out in a warehouse in Halmstad harbor. How the involved persons experienced communication, What factors could affect the communication at such types of critical situations. In the study, two methods have been used. The first used method was a web-survey of people working in civil protection in Halmstad municipality, environmental office in Halmstad, the public living in the municipality, police, Coast Guard, industries and media. The second method was semi-structured interviews addressed to some of those affected who worked in media, police, coast guard, the company, emergency services and the local authority. This study showed that there were differences between the respondents' answers on how respondents perceived that there were risks to human health or the environment in this accident. Many of the respondents who responded to the survey felt that the risk communication worked well after the fire. This survey and semi- structured interviews showed that respondents felt that the municipality's website was a good information channel and the internet and social media could be a good source for the responsible authorities to quickly disseminate information to the public. This study showed that the municipality and emergency services were actors most concerned in this context when it came to communicating risks in major accidents where chemicals were involved and all respondents had great confidence to the emergency services and municipality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-67971 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Ali, Muatasem Latif |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för biologi och miljö (BOM) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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