Our concept for analysing the flows of regions and cities

Resilient Regions and Lund University, together with Malmö municipality, Lund municipality and iFACTS are developing a method to identify and measure urban flows at a local level.

Background

Every city and region functions through a number of vital societal functions which must be maintained, regardless of the strains on them. These functions are highly dependent on different forms of flows: flows of goods, services, money, people, information and energy.

Through the point of departure in societally important flows and their continuity, it is possible to focus on keeping crucially important societal functions working.

Against this background we are working to form a concept for flow analysis.

The method should be useful in a municipality or city with the aim of creating a whole picture of functions, flows and dependencies for the municipality or region’s geographic area.

Implementation

The project started in 2012 with the production of a model for data collection which has been tested on operations in Malmö and Lund, both in municipal organisations and in some of the businesses which are responsible for operations with a crucial societal importance.

In fall 2012, Hanna Johansson and Anna Åhsberger produced a Master’s dissertation for their Master’s degree in fire protection engineering and risk management at Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering as part of method development. The dissertation is presented in the report (in Swedish) “Dependency analysis from a flow perspective – comparison of methods for data collection” (ISSN: 1402-3504).

A pilot study was carried out in Malmö and Lund during fall 2012 and spring 2013 where the method was tested on various functions. During fall 2013 the method was further developed with a focus on how to use the analysis and draw conclusions. There are also plans to develop computer support.

Results

We are aiming to report the results in the form of a handbook where it is possible to concretely and practically describe how to proceed in the analysis of a city’s or region’s flows. We are aiming for a result which is easy to implement rather than it being just a report.

If you are interested, you are welcome to contact Olle Uhlmann, +46 (0)703-38 04 08.