About the House of Public Safety

House of Public Safety is a meeting point for various emergency response teams in the event of major incidents. It is also the central organization offering and orchestrating emergency preparedness support for the municipal crisis management in Bergen.
As a municipal agency in Bergen, the House of Public Safety also has the ambition to be involved in emergency response management for the state of Vestland. After all, the Bergen municipality is Norway's second largest municipality, with almost 290,000 inhabitants.
Our agency consists of 3 departments:
- our research and competence center offers courses, training, and counseling,
- the service and security center provides security services associated with Bergen City Hall,
- the cooperative center provides emergency services to Bergen municipality and cooperative municipalities. It also serves as a point of contact for other emergency response teams in the event of larger critical events that might impact the whole municipality.
The cooperative center is co-located with the other security functions in Bergen municipality, including an emergency center, the center for welfare technology and security alarms, and the call center for municipal infrastructure (such as roads, water, and sewage).
Whilst all parts are equally important, the cooperative center drives the operative teams that handle critical event management. Every year, between 350 and 400 different incidents are handled in the RAYVN solution in Bergen. Some examples include house fires, evacuation, or a missing person. Most are small-scale incidents that are dealt with on the spot. However, larger incidents that require our teams at the House of Public Safety to follow up are logged as an incident in the duty log.