Southwest Finland Emergency Services provides rescue and safety services to 27 municipalities in the westernmost part of mainland Finland. In addition, it provides emergency medical care services in the areas of five joint municipal authorities of health care. The operating area covers over 20 000 square kilometers from which approximately 50 percent are land areas, and it includes a large archipelago consisting of 22 000 islands.
Basic tasks include rescuing and protecting people, property, animals and the environment, in addition to preventing accidents and promoting a culture of safety. SWFES does continuous risk assessment from which the risks derived from the climate change are one essential part. SWFES also cooperates continuously with city planners regarding the climate change related issues.
More information about Southwest Finland Emergency Services
SWFES is the Lead Partner of the CASCADE project and in charge of the project coordination. Additionally their specialists participate in different project activities including communication and developing the training package.
Presenting Heikki Niemi from SWFES preparedness unit
I am a planning officer in the SWFES preparedness unit. In my work I am involved in planning our region's contingency plan from normal to exceptional circumstances. My tasks focus among other things on environmental damage prevention planning in co-operation with the regional and local level. At this moment I`m taking part in four different work groups, working together either on regional or local level for example on stormwater problems from the city perspective and on what the sea level rise in the Baltic Sea will mean for buildings or infrastructure.
South West Finland is one of Finland`s granary areas and we are also interested in how climate change will affect the future planning against drought seasons among other things.
Few years ago I took part in Interreg programs planning how to fight against oil-spill accidents in the Baltic Sea. In CASCADE I work as an expert representing our rescue services in work package 3 focusing on Capacity building on integrated climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR) management lead by the Hamburg Fire and Rescue Service (LFS).
In this wonderful project I will seek to promote the importance of co-operation between different local and regional authorities and bodies. There are a lot of interesting things to do together in the future!
Text by: Heikki Niemi, SWFES
Photo by: Mika Lehestö
This is was the last article in the series “Introducing CASCADE Project Partners”. During the past weeks and months CASCADE has introduced all the Project Partners and their visions here on the CASCADE website.
