Collective-action in Natural Disaster Management: Evidence from Wildfire Responder Networks in Sweden and Canada

An increasingly important aspect of global sustainability and climate change adaptation is the capacity of communities to withstand extreme climate events by building and maintaining resilience. A key aspect of resilience in relation to natural disasters is the ability of a community to recover by utilizing its own resources. The capacity to mobilize resources to effectively manage sudden disasters depends largely on viability of collaboration among multiple actors with diverse missions, interests, and competencies. Disaster responder networks can help reduce transaction costs and support collective-action towards innovation and flexibility, but may as well be a source of coordination problems and delayed response. Analyzing these disaster responder networks is thus an important first step to understand the capacity to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters. We report findings from a comparative study of wildfire responder networks in Sweden and Canada. The study draws on interviews and a unique replicated survey involving managers engaged in the response in two major wildfires: Västmanland, Sweden (2014) and Fort McMurray, Canada (2016). The study investigates how the actors perceived challenges related to the evolving nature of disaster responder networks, collaboration problems, and how these problems were addressed. In addition, we introduce a novel approach for assessing the effectiveness of collaboration as a function of the level of fit between what tasks managers engaged with and their collaborative ties to other actors. The analysis is positioned in relation to the different designs of the emergency response; while the crisis management system in Canada is characterized by a ‘command-and-control’ structure, the Swedish system is based on less formalized collaboration. Based on these structural differences, we are able to assess if and how institutional preconditions shape actors’ decisions about how they choose to collaborate in disaster responder networks.