Decision-making in emergencies requires non-traditional approach and tools characterized by non-hierarchical structure and flexibility. The dynamic environment of disasters makes it imperative to invest in inter-sector and inter-agency cooperation and coordination. Focusing on the Emergency Management Assistance Compact's (EMAC) response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, this article examines the decision-making structure of the agreement. EMAC is an inter-state mutual aid agreement that facilitates sharing of resources during and after disasters. While EMAC's overall decision-making performance was relatively satisfactory and flawless, investment in communication, trust-building, and eradication of inter-agency value differences and discrepancies is imperative.

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Collaborative Decision-Making in Emergency and Disaster Management

The study examines whether error exposure training can enhance adaptive performance. Fifty-nine experienced fire-fighters undergoing training for incident command participated in the study. War stories were developed based on real events to illustrate successful and unsuccessful incident command decisions. Two training methodologies were compared and evaluated. One group was trained using case studies that depicted incidents containing errors of management with severe consequences in fire-fighting outcomes (error-story training) while a second group was exposed to the same set of case studies except that the case studies depicted the incidents being managed without errors and their consequences (errorless-story training). The results provide some support for the hypothesis that it is better to learn from other people's errors than from their successes. Implications for training are discussed.

Using “War Stories” to Train for Adaptive Performance: Is it Better to Learn from Error or Success?

One of the critical infrastructure components in most economies across the world is the rail network. In different nations rail is responsible for ensuring that there is not complete gridlock on the roads in commuter hours, and for moving both people and freight for long distances in an as efficient manner as possible. This critical role, a number of high profile accidents and proposals for new network control philosophies and systems have led to a great upsurge in human factors rail research and applications in the past few years. This paper provides a retrospective on rail human factors research covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, incident reporting systems, passengers and the public, planning and technical systems change. This research foundation, and also current major rail human factors programmes, are placed in the context of technology, investment, competition, cultural and safety requirements and constraints. The paper concludes with an examination of where rail human factors should and will be going into the future.Rail human factors research has grown rapidly in both quantity and quality of output over the past few years. There was an early base of work at a few institutions carried out over the 1960 s and 1970 s, followed by a lull in the 1980 s and early 1990 s. The continual influences of safety concerns, new technical system opportunities, reorganisation of the business, needs to increase effective, reliable and safe use of capacity, and increased society, media and government interest have now accelerated rail human factors research programmes in several countries. In this paper we review the literature on rail human factors research, covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, reporting systems, passenger interests, planning and technical systems change. Current major rail human factors programmes are summarised and future research needs proposed. It is asserted that general human factors models and methods are being re-assessed, and new ones developed, to meet the requirements of the railways.

Human factors in support of a successful railway: a review

This study presents a narrative synthesis of a systematic literature review relating to multi-agency interoperability and major incident decision-making in high risk, high stake environments. The review methodology includes the identification of relevant studies, a critical appraisal of the concepts inherent in the main review question and a narrative synthesis of the central themes that relate to the study as a whole. The review firstly outlines what, currently, appear to be the perceived defining features of successful interoperability by using the SAFE-T phase model of major incident decision-making. It then considers whether these defining features are realistically achievable in major incident practice. Findings suggest that the current definition of an interoperable network is too demanding for the inherent complexity and dynamic nature of the major incident task environment. Individual teams tend to focus on agency-specific behaviour, as opposed to coordinated multi-team functioning, and so collective interoperability is not achieved. Inevitably, this reduces the ability to perform collaborative behaviours, including decision-making and action implementation. The paper concludes that aiming for the current conceptualisation of interoperability along a hierarchical command structure may actually inhibit effective decision-making. Instead, multi-agency systems would do better to work towards an improved understanding of a non-hierarchical and decentralised yet interoperable major incident management network. Recommendations include the need to relate theory and practice in the development of multi-agency decision-making via simulation-based training and to deepen our understanding of interoperability to prevent inertia in high risk, high stake major incident environments.

A systematic review of the potential hurdles of interoperability to the emergency services in major incidents: recommendations for solutions and alternatives

The organizational science of disaster and terrorism is underdeveloped. In an effort to help promote it and, based on a review of existing literature as well as lessons learned from the process of developing the special issue, two models and derived sample propositions for future research are offered. The models span multiple levels and use system, network, and identity theories to tie together key constructs. Existing conceptual views of, and research on, organizations and disaster/terrorism are considered, and missing and under-researched concepts are identified. Proposed linkages among constructs are offered to produce nomological networks for the organizational science of disaster/terrorism intended to help guide the future development of the field. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The organizational science of disaster/terrorism prevention and response: Theory‐building toward the future of the field

The emergency director's (ED) decision making is decisive for the outcome of an emergency operation. Particularly in large-scale operations, the cognitive demands on the ED are severe. Ninety fire chiefs were interviewed about their own accounts of factors affecting the difficulty level of decisions. Types of decisions described as especially hard to make concerned giving priorities in lifesaving operations and evacuations and whether to adopt an offensive or a defensive fire fighting strategy. Perceived stressors related to lack of information in the initial phase of an operation. Emergency management, being a control task, can be analyzed within the framework of distributed dynamic decision making. Interview data confirmed some findings of previous laboratory research of distributed dynamic decision making. Information needs differ according to the decision-maker's position in the distributed system. A model for evaluation of information transmitted to the emergency management system is proposed.

Decision Making in Emergency Management: A Survey Study

Models of decision making in emergency management

Prevention of large-scale accidents (often called organizational disasters) is of growing importance in today's industrial organizations. Organizational disasters where large numbers of people and wide geographic areas are affected can mean serious economic and operation disruption to an organization. The role of managers in the prevention of organizational disasters is described as critical. However, typical manager attitude towards organizational disasters is that occurrence is unlikely. This attitude causes them to neglect prevention strategies and activities. Shaping the attitudes of future managers during their university level training (e.g., in MBA programs) through a class in ergonomics and safety is described as one means to shape manager attitudes. Psychological models of attitude formation and behavior show that an attitude is stronger when there is learning about a topic. Greater knowledge and interest may later prevent organization disasters when students become managers. There would likely b...

Reducing Occupational Accident and Injury Rates Through Safety and Macroergonomic Education of Future Managers

As a preliminary study, a literature survey has been conducted. The survey aims at researching current thinking on techniques useful for prevention and investigation of major fires and other accide ...

Kjell Ohlsson

Papers

Decision Making in Emergency Management: A Survey Study

Models of decision making in emergency management

Reducing Occupational Accident and Injury Rates Through Safety and Macroergonomic Education of Future Managers

Safety programs and accident prevention : prevention of organizational disasters

Technology driven changes of train dispatch centers