The Interreg Aurora funded project High North Civil Preparedness Forum aim to strengthen interregional cooperation within civil preparedness in northern Finland, Sweden and Norway. The target groups for the project’s activities are key civil preparedness stakeholders in the in the programme area, such as municipalities, agencies, and volunteer organisations.
The project has four focus areas
- International cooperation courses and networks
The project will annually arrange an international cooperation course (ICC) focusing on one of NATO’s seven civilian baseline requirements. The first course, in the fall of 2025, will focus the third baseline requirement: managing uncontrolled movements of people. In addition to the courses, the project includes two networks, one for actors in the field of healthcare and mass casualty management, and one so-called Border Rescue Council. - Host Nation Support
The purpose of host nation support (HNS) is to enable international civilian and military actors to operate on, or move through, a country’s territory. Within the project, the actors will share experiences from previous work with HNS in each country, carry out knowledge-building activities, and investigate how we can cooperate during ongoing HNS operations across national borders. - Joint risk assessment for the High North region
All three countries are already working today to analyze and assess risks within their geographical area. Within the project, we will investigate opportunities to harmonize methods used for risk assessment, and to make a joint risk assessment for the High North region. - Handling information influence
Undue information influence and influence campaigns are above all a threat to democracy and free opinion formation. In the project, we will increase knowledge in the area and identify how we, within the three countries, can jointly counteract information influence and, among other things, develop a strategy for this.
The project will present an action plan that describes how the work in different areas will continue after the end of the project in 2028.
Contact: Linda Hällgren, Project Coordinator, Länsstyrelsen Västerbotten, linda.hallgren@lansstyrelsen.se
