| dc.description.abstract | We discuss the role of part-time firefighters as a resource for local emergency management in Norway. Informal social relations, the trust between practitioners and the social capital of the organization, has been recognized as a resource for emergency management, particularly as it contributes to improvisation and coordination between actors belonging to different professional groups. Likewise, social capital, the trust among citizens, has been identified as a resource for societal resilience in crises. We discuss a combination of these forms, how the social embeddedness of the emergency practitioners in the community and the multiplexity of roles is important for community resilience. These professionals know each other through several different social roles, and have resources beyond the formal capacities their position should suggest. Thus, role multiplexity and social networks provides a functional redundancy and is a resource for resilience in the management of incidents and emergencies. These abilities are hard to make visible in a work plan and challenging to include in exercises. Moreover, these abilities are affected by recent developments towards professionalization of and centralization | nb_NO |
