Abstract
School fires have become a cause of concern in Sweden in recent years. The fire brigades assess that the majority of these fires are intentionally ignited. This research seeks to identify categories of schools at elevated risk of fire-setting by matching data on school fires from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency with data on schools from the Swedish National Agency for Education and calculating fire rates. The results indicate that schools which include senior level pupils, larger sized schools, schools organized by a public provider and schools located in bigger cities experience significantly higher rates of fire-setting. The risk of fire-setting is unevenly distributed across school categories in Sweden and knowledge on the relative proneness would help school and fire officials to set more informed priorities in their safety work.
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Acknowledgements
This study was made possible through collaboration with the Swedish National Agency for Education. We would like to thank Sven Sundin, Swedish National Agency for Education, for his contributions and Colin McIntyre, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, for providing language help and proof reading the article. We would also like to thank Bjorn Andersson, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, for his contributions. Unfortunately Bjorn passed away before this article was finished.
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Jonsson, A., Lundqvist, M., Gell, T. et al. Identifying schools at risk of fire-setting. Secur J 30, 153–161 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2014.40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2014.40