Multidisciplinary coordination of on-scene command teams in virtual emergency exercises

Theo van Ruijven, Igor Mayer and Mark de Bruijne

International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, 2015, vol. 9, issue C, 13-23

Abstract: This paper presents the design and the results of a comparative study of multidisciplinary on-scene command teams at work in virtual emergency training exercises. The principal goals of the study were to understand how “on-scene command teams” coordinate on multidisciplinary objectives and tasks, and how the manner in which this is done affects their performance. The study involved 20 on-scene command teams consisting of various individuals, such as police, fire and medical services personnel, municipal officers and infrastructure operators, drawn from a Safety Region in The Netherlands. Integrated video recordings by five synchronized cameras captured the coordination processes during the virtual exercises. The integrated and synchronized video recordings were then transformed into numerical data for analysis. Performance was operationalized by scoring the progress and completion of emergency management tasks for which individual members and/or teams as a whole were responsible. Team coordination was operationalized using network centrality and density measures. The significant findings are the following: (i) emergency management performance and coordination patterns within and among on-scene command teams have considerable variation; and (ii) teams that use less coordination during the intermediate phases of emergency management perform significantly better than teams that do not; moreover, actors who have central positions in a network are better able to achieve their performance goals.

Keywords: Emergency response; Crisis management; Team performance; Game-based training; Virtual team training; Video observation; Network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijocip:v:9:y:2015:i:c:p:13-23

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2015.02.005

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