Identifying Resilient Actions in Decision Making During Emergencies

Abstract

All emergency management phases demands knowledge that is embedded in procedures and also in the minds of people who handle them. Specifically in emergency response, a great amount of contextual information is generated which results from the development of the event, including the unplanned remedial actions carried out by the teams. Part of these remedial actions and decisions are made on the fly because they are not part of the formal procedures. After the event, the understanding and the analysis of these situations are important to refine the emergency plans. Many emergency investigations do this, but they usually concentrate on failures. Our approach is to concentrate on those actions that resulted in success. Telling stories is a natural way of transmitting tacit knowledge among individuals and groups. Stories are great vehicles for wrapping together elements of knowledge such as tacit knowledge, emotion, the core, and the context. They are a very powerful way to represent complex, multidimensional concepts. While a certain amount of knowledge can be reflected as information, stories hold the key to unlocking vital knowledge, which remains beyond the reach of codified information (Ruggles, 2004).

Key Terms in this Chapter

Group Storytelling: A technique for acquiring tacit knowledge retained by a group of people.

Emergency Plan: A set of predefined procedures to be adopted during the occurrence of an emergency.

Emergency Response: An articulated response to an emergency.

Resilient Decisions: Well succeeded decisions adopted to guarantee a system’s dynamic equilibrium, so as to correct, minimize, or even avoid the effects of an unforeseen event.

Emergency: A serious situation triggered by one or more events that poses a risk to life, property, or environment.