Understanding Fear and Unease in Open Domains: Toward a Typology for Deviant Behaviour in Public Space
The aim of the study described in this paper is to construct a typology for deviant behaviour tha... more The aim of the study described in this paper is to construct a typology for deviant behaviour that causes unpleasant incidents in public space. To investigate what sort of unpleasant incidents people might encounter, the study used a qualitative survey methodology whereby Norwegian respondents were asked to describe unpleasant incidents. Other studies often use data on criminal incidents that have been extracted from official records and thus ignore incidents that may cause fear without being serious enough to be reported. This study has demonstrated that to understand what makes people uncomfortable in public space we must study incidents that are deviant without breaking the law, as well as criminal behaviour. All types of deviance make people change their behaviour, but deviance motivated by sexual gratification seemingly makes people change their behaviour more frequently. Hence, policymakers should focus not only on preventing crime, but also on preventing deviant acts that cre...
viii support during my efforts to find my own professional way. Your support has empowered me to ... more viii support during my efforts to find my own professional way. Your support has empowered me to reach for what I really enjoy. To my father, Per Gunnar Frislid: You have throughout my life inspired my academic curiosity. Thank you! I also want to thank family, friends and other relations for just making my life richer. While I have enjoyed my Ph.D. work, my life is still more about all the other experiences life has to offer; and you guys are a prerequisite for me experiencing them.
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 2014
Most studies comparing hazard perception skills between young and middle-aged drivers show that i... more Most studies comparing hazard perception skills between young and middle-aged drivers show that increasing age is associated with decreased reaction time to traffic hazards, although some studies failed to find this relationship. Studies on young people's hazard perception demonstrate that younger children have a more idiosyncratic perspective on the road environment and thus might have difficulty in understanding non-obvious dangers, such as dangers caused by lack of sight. This study's purpose is to examine the relationship between age and hazard perception when comparing children, teenagers, and adults. It demonstrates that children under 13 years of age have significantly longer hazard perception latencies and lower response rates to some traffic hazards than teenagers or adults. This effect is larger for hazards not involving ''threatening'' vehicles, such as hazards caused by standing or slowly moving road users on the side of the street with the ability to cause dangerous situations by behaving unexpectedly. The results indicate types of hazards to be emphasized in traffic safety education for children.
Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World
The aims of the present study are to 1) develop and test a scale measuring organizational informa... more The aims of the present study are to 1) develop and test a scale measuring organizational information security culture, and 2) examine its relationships to other aspects of information security. The study focuses on an organization providing critical infrastructure. We developed the scale by conducting qualitative interviews (N = 22) and three focus groups (N = 15) in an organization providing critical infrastructure, and by reviewing previous research on culture in organisations. Based on our literature review and the interviews, we chose to measure organizational information security culture by reformulating one of the few existing general organizational safety culture questionnaires. We first tested the questionnaire in a small pilot survey, and then conducted a questionnaire survey (N = 323) including all departments in the organization. Our examination of the factor structure of the scale indicated two factors. Regression analyses indicate that our adapted GAIN-scale, measuring organizational information security culture is the most important variable influencing information security behavior in the model.
Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World, 2018
The aims of the present study are to 1) develop and test a scale measuring organizational informa... more The aims of the present study are to 1) develop and test a scale measuring organizational information security culture, and 2) examine its relationships to other aspects of information security. The study focuses on an organization providing critical infrastructure. We developed the scale by conducting qualitative interviews (N = 22) and three focus groups (N = 15) in an organization providing critical infrastructure, and by reviewing previous research on culture in organisations. Based on our literature review and the interviews, we chose to measure organizational information security culture by reformulating one of the few existing general organizational safety culture questionnaires. We first tested the questionnaire in a small pilot survey, and then conducted a questionnaire survey (N = 323) including all departments in the organization. Our examination of the factor structure of the scale indicated two factors. Regression analyses indicate that our adapted GAIN-scale, measuring organizational information security culture is the most important variable influencing information security behavior in the model.
Norway is one of the countries that constructs the most road tunnels, and there are well over 1,0... more Norway is one of the countries that constructs the most road tunnels, and there are well over 1,000 in the country. Road tunnels are usually at least as safe as, or safer than similar roads in the open air, but they have a disaster potential related to vehicle fires. The report maps and describes the characteristics of fires and smoke without fire in Norwegian road tunnels during the last 4 years. The average number of fires in Norwegian road tunnels is 21.25 per year per 1,000 tunnels. The average number of smoke without fire is 12.5 per year per 1,000 tunnels. The fires and the instances of smoke without fire do usually not involve harm to people or the tunnels. Of the 135 fires and instances of smoke without fire, we know that 8 involved minor injury to people and that 8 involved serious personal injury or death. 40 of the 135 fires involved damage to vehicles and 20 involved damage to tunnels. Technical problems are the most frequent cause of fires and instances of smoke without...
There are more than 1000 road tunnels in Norway. The report maps and describes characteristics of... more There are more than 1000 road tunnels in Norway. The report maps and describes characteristics of fires in Norwegian road tunnels 2008-2011. The study uses the following sources: 1) the electronic records of the Norwegian road traffic centrals, 2) road traffic central operators, 3) employees of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration working with road tunnel safety, 4) fire services, and 5) news archives. The average number of fires in Norwegian road tunnels per year is 21.25 per 1000 tunnels. The average number of smoke without fire is 12.5 per year per 1000 tunnels. Subsea tunnels are overrepresented among vehicle fires in Norwegian tunnels, and heavy vehicles (>3,5 t) seem, in turn, overrepresented in subsea tunnel fires. Technical problems seem to be the most frequent cause of these fires.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021
During emergencies, exposure to false information can increase individual vulnerability. More res... more During emergencies, exposure to false information can increase individual vulnerability. More research is needed on how emergency management institutions understand the effects of false information and what are the various approaches to handling it. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in eight European countries-Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Norway, Finland, and Estoniashow that approaches vary considerably: some have instituted central management of identifying and tackling false information while others prioritise the spreading of accurate information. A review of national practices and an analysis of recent crisis cases show that both approaches may be necessary. The diffusion of false information is strongly affected by the lack of timely and verifiable information from governments. We also find that in several countries, the emergence of false information is often associated with malicious foreign influence activities. Our study contributes to a better understanding of how the effects of false information are mitigated by the emergency management systems in Europe.
A security risk analysis was conducted to identify possible cyberattacks against a future transpo... more A security risk analysis was conducted to identify possible cyberattacks against a future transport system consisting of autonomous and connected vehicles. Six scenarios were developed: joyriding, kidnapping, domestic abuse, autopilot manipulation, a large transport accident, and paralysis of the transport system. Even if it were possible to increase the difficulty of conducting such cyberattacks, it might be impossible to eliminate such attacks entirely. Measures that limit the consequences will therefore be necessary. Such measures include safety measures in vehicles to protect their occupants in traffic accidents and measures that make vehicles easier to remove in case they do not function.
While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, r... more While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document analysis and 95 interviews with disaster managers and reveals significant differences across countries in terms of the ontology of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties. To advance the debate and provide conceptual clarity, we put forward a heuristic model to facilitate different understandings of vulnerability along the dimensions of human agency and technological structures as well as social support through private relations and state actors. This could guide risk analysis of and planning for ...
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 2015
Recent research has proposed fitting responses from discrete choice experiments to asymmetric val... more Recent research has proposed fitting responses from discrete choice experiments to asymmetric value functions consistent with prospect theory, taking into account respondents' reference points in their valuation of choice attributes. Previous studies have mainly concentrated on travel time and cost attributes, while evidence regarding road safety attributes is very limited. This paper investigates the implicit utility of a road safety attribute, defined as the number of casualties per year in alternative car trip choices, when safety improves or deteriorates. Using appropriate statistical tests we are able to reject symmetric preferences for losses and gains in the level of safety and estimate a sigmoid value function that exhibits loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity. This adds an interesting psychological dimension to the preference of road safety. Possible implications of this finding for policy making are discussed.
The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and co... more The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and consumption of false informationunverified claims, misleading statements, false rumours, conspiracy theories, and so onall around the world. When various official or unofficial sources issue erroneous, misleading or contradicting information during a crisis, people who are exposed to this may behave in ways that cause harm to the health and well-being of themselves or others, e.g., by not taking appropriate risk reducing measures or blaming or harassing vulnerable groups. To work towards a typology of informational content that may increase people's vulnerability in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, we explored 98 instances of potentially harmful information that spread in six European countries-France, Italy, Norway, Finland, Lithuania, and Estoniabetween March and May 2020. We suggest that during the pandemic, exposure to harmful information may have made people more vulnerable in six ways: (1) by discouraging appropriate protective actions against catching/spreading the virus, (2) by promoting the use of false (or harmful) remedies against the virus, (3) by misrepresenting the transmission mechanisms of the virus, (4) by downplaying the risks related to the pandemic, (5) by tricking people into buying fake protection against the virus or into revealing their confidential information, and (6) by victimising the alleged spreaders of the virus by harassment/hate speech. The proposed typology can be used to guide the development of risk communication plans to address each of these information-related vulnerabilities.
Lone-wolf terrorism is often more difficult to detect through intelligence due to limited communi... more Lone-wolf terrorism is often more difficult to detect through intelligence due to limited communication between plotters. This study addresses this problem by spelling out an alternative method for impeding such attacks. It combines crime scripts, situational crime prevention and rational planning to study how to impede attacks such as the 2011 Norway attacks. Analyzing the transport issues in these attacks demonstrates that some sort of entry control and measures facilitating the evacuation in case of prolonged attacks might reduce the harm.
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Papers by Sunniva Meyer