Rethinking Sectoral Risk Assessment: Bridging Risk Governance and Resilience Engineering

Abstract

Public sector governance increasingly faces systemic risks that evolve across organisational boundaries, yet sectoral risk assessments remain largely event-focused and often duplicate overarching or underlying analyses. Through a participatory action research case in the City of Oslo, this study examines why such duplication occurs and how the lack of sector-adapted methodologies limits the use of sectoral risk assessment as a governance tool. The findings reveal a structural misalignment between vertically organised sector governance and horizontally evolving systemic risks, resulting in analytical duplication, fragmentation, and limited managerial use. To address this gap, the study develops sector values, governability criteria, and operational excerpts centred on sectors’ functional and governance capacities. By reframing sectoral risk analysis around sectoral governance and functional capacity, the study demonstrates how risk assessment can operate as a governance interface rather than merely as a documentation exercise within a multi-level, cross-sectoral governance system. Theoretically, the study bridges systemic risk, resilience engineering, and risk governance by operationalising these perspectives within sector-based public administration.