Jacob Taarup

My work on Svalbard centres on emergency preparedness and the adaptive capacity of socio-technical systems to climate-induced disasters. The focus on Spitsbergen includes storms, shifting sea ice, avalanches, flooding and wildlife encounters. 

I am an Associate Professor in enterprise emergency response and business continuity research at the University of Stavanger and University College Copenhagen. My interests primarily centre on investigating how to approach/make sense of risk assessments, business continuity, and local emergency response capabilities. For the past years, I have been focusing on business continuity and risk management under Arctic conditions working with uncertainties related to the extractive industry and critical infrastructure. 

I am currently involved in three projects in the Arctic. First, Resilient communities in the high North sponsored by the Nordic council involve training emergency response professionals, municipalities and private companies in crisis management. The second project, Reshaping preparedness in the Arctic under evolving threats (REACT). The project presents an alternative approach to dimensioning emergency response in small isolated Arctic communities and provides a system for organising crisis management governance systems. The third project, ArcRisk, is sponsored by NordForsk and focuses on climate change adaptation in Longyearbyen on Svalbard. The project involves technical and social capacities to manage emerging hazards surrounding Longyearbyen, e.g. snow avalanches.