@article {bnh-6697, title = {Duty or safety? Exploring emergency service personnel{\textquoteright}s perceptions of risk and decision-making when driving through floodwater}, journal = {Progress in Disaster Science}, volume = {5}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2020}, abstract = {

Vehicle-related flood fatalities and rescues due to driving through floodwater are a significant emergency management issue for emergency services. To reduce fatalities, injuries, and costs associated with this risky driving behaviour it is essential to develop strategies to stop or reduce the incidence of people driving through floodwater. In Australia, people are told not to enter floodwater {\textendash} on foot or in vehicles {\textendash} with the phrase {\textquoteleft}If it{\textquoteright}s flooded, forget it{\textquoteright} widely used in official messaging. As first responders responsible for floods, storms and tsunamis, Australian State Emergency Service (SES) personnel are working in flood conditions regularly and are considered an occupationally {\textquoteleft}at-risk{\textquoteright} group for driving through floodwater. Although SES agencies across states and territories in Australia are independently led, they typically promote policies of not entering floodwater to their personnel. Such policies are important for meeting duty of care obligations to employees, for protection of assets (vehicles and equipment), and for upholding organisational reputation (leading by example). This study was undertaken to explore the behaviour of driving through floodwater by SES personnel. The study explored the characteristics of those who have and have not driven through floodwater, and then used detailed situations in which SES personnel entered floodwater in vehicles to analyse their perception of risks, the conditions and contexts in which they entered floodwater, and to identify what influenced their decision to enter.

Following an earlier systematic literature review, a detailed online questionnaire was developed and administered to SES personnel from a single agency. Data from 670 respondents indicated that 54.8\% had driven through floodwater in the previous two years, and a number of differences in the profile of those who had/had not driven through floodwater were identified. Those more likely to have driven through floodwater included males, volunteer personnel with longer lengths of service, those doing more driving hours per week, those deployed to work in flood conditions, and those with current flood rescue qualifications. The location type, water depth, and water velocity were conditions that contributed more to perception of risk at the time personnel drove through the floodwater. Detailed information about an experience of entering floodwater was obtained from 201 respondents who had driven through floodwater in SES vehicles, and six factors relating to the decision to drive through floodwater were extracted. {\textquoteleft}Organisational training and safety{\textquoteright}, {\textquoteleft}External locus of control{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}Absence of risk signals{\textquoteright} were identified as having the greatest influence on risk perception leading to decisions to drive through floodwater. The findings of the study have a number of practical implications for the improvement of occupational safety management; such as upgrading risk assessments strategies, reviewing workplace health and safety policies, enhancing training, increasing skills and knowledge of emergency services personnel about floodwater hazard situations, and improving internal flood risk communication.

}, keywords = {Decision making, Driving, emergency services, floodwater, Occupational safety, Risk perception}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2020.100068}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590061720300053?via\%3Dihub}, author = {Mozumdar Arifa Ahmed and Katharine Haynes and Matalena Tofa and Gemma Hope and Mel Taylor} } @article {bnh-5042, title = {Driving into floodwater: A systematic review of risks, behaviour and mitigation}, journal = {International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction}, volume = {31}, year = {2018}, month = {10/2018}, pages = {10}, chapter = {953}, abstract = {

This systematic review summarises the findings of research focused on the risks associated with driving into floodwater. The review aims to compare and document the magnitude of the problem internationally; identifying the risk factors; exploring the application of theories and presence of theoretical models to explain people{\textquoteright}s risky behaviour; and documenting the intervention strategies utilised or proposed. Literature were searched from a number of databases (e.g. PsycInfo, ScienceDirect, Informit) for publication dates to 31 August 2017, then assessed based on their titles, abstracts and full texts and finally 24 articles were selected. This review compares flood fatality data from four countries (Australia, United States, Greece, and Sweden), groups identified risk factors from these selected studies into seven categories, and proposes a holistic integrated intervention model. The results of the review indicate that studies were predominantly conducted in Australia (10 studies) and USA (7 studies). People{\textquoteright}s decisions to drive into, or turn back from, floodwater are identified as a consequence of both their risk perception and the combined impact of all other factors (e.g. individual, social, environmental etc.) that interdependently contribute to shape decision-making, The theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was the only theory that has been utilised within the literature to understand drivers{\textquoteright} willingness to take risks. Improving people{\textquoteright}s decision-making through educational initiatives, advanced structural mechanisms, regulating existing edicts, and regularly evaluating the effectiveness of current strategies are identified as the best approaches to addressing the challenges in this area. Findings suggest that future studies require data and analysis from a larger range of countries, more comparative analyses within and between countries, an exploration of the relationship between risk factors and their relative level of influence and a greater application of behavioural and decision making theories.

}, keywords = {Behavioural theories, Driving, Drowning, Fatalities, Flood, Risk factors, Risk mitigation measures, Risk perception, Vehicles}, doi = {10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.07.007}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420918300323}, author = {Mel Taylor and Katharine Haynes and Mozumdar Arifa Ahmed} }