Operational threat assessments for civil defence planning

Planning for the relevant measures in the event of crisis or war is to a large extent a matter of handling uncertainty. Since society’s civilian functions can hardly be organized in a way similar to that of the military, preparedness and security has to be integrated with existing systems and everyday routines. Operational threat assessments can be formulated to support analyses of necessary measures. General security policy judgments are decomposed into plausible scenarios, characterized by different sets of typical events. Their possible consequences under actual conditions are studied and evaluated. Different chains of events can be flexibly generated and tested. This points at the necessity of cooperation between analytical and practical competences.