Developing disaster management capability: an assessment centre approach

Abstract

Fundamental to disaster readiness planning is developing training strategies to compensate for the limited opportunities available for acquiring actual disaster response experience. With regard to communication, decision making and integrated emergency management response, the need to develop mental models capable of reconciling knowledge of multiple goals with the collective expertise of those responding represents a significant challenge for training. This paper explores the utility of the assessment centre as a developmental resource capable of achieving this goal. In addition to providing multiple, expertly evaluated simulations to facilitate the development and practice of specific skills, the ability of assessment centre methodology to promote tacit knowledge and self-efficacy renders it an appropriate vehicle for developing the mental models that underpin the core disaster management competencies of situational awareness and naturalistic and team decision making.

Decision-Making: Preventing Miscommunication and Creating Shared Meaning Between Stakeholders

“…For incident management, this represents a mental "map" of the operating environment. This must encompass event characteristics and hazard consequences and each other's differing needs, responsibilities, roles, and demands, as well as the interdependencies that contribute to effective problem solving and decision making (Rogalski and Samurçay 1993;Flin 1996;Paton and Jackson 2002). A shared mental model allows a distributed team to share understanding of the task at hand, anticipate and proactively respond to information needs (Lipshitz et al 2001;Pollock et al 2003), and make shared decisions (Orasanu 1994;Salas et al 1994).…”

“…By minimising this gulf, communication between advisors and key decision makers can move from explicit requests for information (which can result in an increase in time delays, pressures and stress, impacting decision making effectiveness-particularly if reformatting of that information is also required; Klein 1997;Crichton and Flin 2002) through to implicit supply of advice by the advisors as they recognise ahead of time what information the decision maker needs. Effective teams have been shown to be dominated by communication styles such as this Lipshitz et al 2001;Paton and Jackson 2002;KowalskiTrakofler et al 2003). Table 3 describes the characteristics of teams that display these effective communication and advice provision styles.…”

“…Table 3 describes the characteristics of teams that display these effective communication and advice provision styles. Implicit communication also facilitates the maintenance of situational awareness during periods of dynamic information as it allows decision makers to focus on task management (see review in Doyle et al 2015;Paton and Jackson 2002;Paton 2003;Wilson et al 2007;Owen et al 2013). For this to occur, these scientists and experts must recognise and understand the needs of the decision makers, as well as their timelines and thresholds, supplying information that is useful, useable, and used (Rovins et al 2014).…”

“…These past experiences, through both response and exercises, has identified that this SAG Table 3 Characteristics of teams that display effective communication and advice provision styles during a multi-agency crisis response Provision of science advice should involve (Paton and Jackson 2002;Paton 2003) Effective team communication involves (Wilson et al 2007;Owen et al 2013) Effective team and interagency science advice communication (Doyle et al 2015) Anticipation and definition of information needs Accurate and timely information exchange, correct phraseology and 'closed-loop' communication techniques…”

UK emergency preparedness: a holistic response?

“…Alerting the public to potentially hazardous events is done through a variety of warning and informing systems. The aim is for a return to normality, that is, to re-establish conditions as they were prior to the event (Perry and Peterson, 1999;Alexander, 2000Alexander, , 2003Schassfstal et al,, 2001;Paton and Jackson, 2002;Cassidy, 2002;Perry and Lindell, 2003).…”