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

Transportation systems are complex with respect to technology and operations with involvement in a wide range of human actors, organisations and technical solutions. For the operations and control of such complex environments, a viable solution is to apply intelligent computerised systems, such as computerised traffic control systems for coordinating airline transportation, or advanced monitoring and diagnostic systems in vehicles. Moreover, transportation assets cannot compromise the safety of the passengers by applying operation and maintenance activities. Indeed safety becomes a more difficult goal to achieve using traditional maintenance strategies and computerised solutions come into the picture as the only option to deal with complex systems interacting among them trying to balance the growth in technical complexity together with stable and acceptable dependability indexes. Industry 4.0 is a term that describes the fourth generation of industrial activity which is enabled by smart systems and Internet-based solutions. Two of the characteristic features of Industry 4.0 are computerization by utilising cyber-physical systems and intelligent factories that are based on the concept of “internet of things”. Maintenance is one of the application areas, referred to as maintenance 4.0, in form of self-learning and smart systems that predicts failure, makes diagnosis and triggers maintenance by making use of “internet of things”. This paper discusses the possibilities that lie within applying the maintenance 4.0 concept in the railway transportation industry and the positive effects on technology, organisation and operations from a systems perspective.

Maintenance 4.0 in Railway Transportation Industry

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

The actors in charge of an emergency response are confronted with severe difficulties in coordination and decision making, especially in major accidents. To facilitate coordination, various decisio ...

Usability and decision support systems in emergency management

Models of decision making in emergency management

The aim of this paper is to describe an ongoing project with the aim of improving safety in an organization working with maintenance and development of the railway infrastructure in Sweden. The first sub goal was to investigate the General Failure Types in the organization. Seminars and interviews, based on the Tripod Delta method, with 62 employees resulted in a description of these latent errors in the organization. Recommendations for an improvement toward a safety culture was suggested, action plans were formulated and, in some cases, implemented. A follow up study is planned in a two year perspective.

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How to increase safety in complex systems--an ongoing project.

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...

Mats Danielsson

Papers

Decision Making in Emergency Management: A Survey Study

Usability and decision support systems in emergency management

Models of decision making in emergency management

How to increase safety in complex systems--an ongoing project.

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