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An assessment of the opportunities to improve strategic decision-making in emergency and disaster management

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Version 2 2022-09-19, 05:24
Version 1 2021-01-14, 13:46
journal contribution
posted on 2022-09-19, 05:24 authored by B Brooks, S Curnin, Christopher BearmanChristopher Bearman, C Owen, Sophia Rainbird
The management of major emergencies is strongly in uenced by the decisions made during the event. Decisions guide the distribution and subsequent deployment of assets, the removal of people from harm’s way, how objectives are established and a myriad of other actions. Decision-making is therefore an important skill for emergency managers that permeates every emergency event and every level of disaster management. The vast majority of decisions made during an incident are effective enough in both process and outcome, but the drive for continual improvement and the need to manage more extreme events requires decision-making to become sophisticated and to achieve even higher levels of reliability. So how well are emergency management organisations integrating acknowledged developments in the understanding of decision- making? Where are the opportunities for continual improvement? What are some of the challenges that the expert decision-maker is required to balance across an event? This paper examines key concepts that have progressed the understanding of decision-making. A review of preliminary interactions with end-users of the Bush re and Natural Hazards CRC (CRC) research project ‘Practical decision tools for improved decision-making in complex situations’ considers how Australian and New Zealand are using this knowledge to make decisions. Opportunities for improvement and the approaches being taken to evaluate cognitive decision tools for end-users are identified.

Funding

Category 4 - CRC Research Income

History

Volume

31

Issue

04

Start Page

38

End Page

43

Number of Pages

6

eISSN

2204-2288

ISSN

1324-1540

Publisher

Emergency Management Australia

Additional Rights

CC BY NC Creative Commons License The Australian Journal of Emergency Management by AIDR is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.aidr.org.au

Peer Reviewed

  • Yes

Open Access

  • Yes

External Author Affiliations

University of Tasmania

Era Eligible

  • Yes

Journal

Australian Journal of Emergency Management

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