During the intense autumn with interesting field studies at MSBs national situation room, I got in contact with the team that were intensely engaged in the planning of the Swedish response operation against Ebola in West-Africa. This resulted in an opportunity to conduct field studies on location in Liberia. The studies on location i Liberia will be done in collaboration with DRL (The Disaster Resilience Lab) at Tilburg University and Agder University that already has been to Accra in Ghana and studied the UNMEER-operations. So my studies will together with the work by Tina Comes and Bartel van de Walle hopefully result in important insights regarding how to further advance technology use and management of international response efforts in times when agility, flexibility and a designerly attitude is more important than ever in the fighting of a continuously shifting health-disaster. My focus in Liberia will be on the Swedish operations and the challenges they face and learn from the experiences they make. The field studies starts today and will end on the 10th of january.

My field study has become possible due to MSBs openness to and interest in research combined with support by URBSEC at Chalmers and Gothenburg University. I will whenever possible, provide updates from the field here on the blog.