@article {bnh-2594, title = {Decision making, team monitoring and organisational performance: Part One Executive Summary}, number = {69}, year = {2015}, month = {08/2015}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This research report is an interim report for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project Practical Decision Tools for Improved Decision-Making in Complex Situations. The project plan for this research includes three main research streams: Decision making, team monitoring and organisational performance. The initial work in the project has identified that the three research streams in the project are best treated as interrelated but distinct bodies of work.

For ease, these have been published as separate documents.

All parts can be located at www.bnhcrc.com.au, under the Practical decision tools for improved decision-making in complex, time constrained and multi-team environments project page.

Each of the research streams has been coordinated by one of the principal researchers in the project and each research stream is thus considered discretely in this report.\  While we have chosen to present the research streams individually here there is a large degree of interrelation between the streams, particularly between the team monitoring and organisational performance streams; and both are informed by the decision-making tranche of work. The interdependence of these streams will be emphasized in later phases of the research project.\ \ 

}, issn = {69}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin and Keith Fitzgerald and Grunwald, J and Rainbird, Sophia} } @article {bnh-2314, title = {Practical decision tools for improved decision-making in complex, time-constrained and multi-team environments: Annual project report 2014-2015}, number = {126}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This annual report presents information about the Bushfire and Natural Hazard CRC funded project: Cognitive Decision Strategies, which is concerned with decision making, team monitoring and organisational performance in emergency management.\ 

As the incidents associated with natural hazards increase in complexity, duration, and the number of agencies involved, there is likely to be an increased frequency of degraded operational situations, breakdowns within and between teams and the occurrence of errors. These problems will play out within the context of a decreasing tolerance in the community and their political representatives to emergency management coordination failure.\  The current project has three main research streams that aim to: Provide enhanced methods of making decisions in complex situations; develop methods to better monitor teams to detect breakdowns and disconnects that can impair operational performance; and to develop enhanced methods for agencies to evaluate and learn from their operational performance.

Towards this end the research team have visited 18 agencies in Australia and New Zealand to collect data and discuss the issues around decision making, team monitoring and to identify how agencies currently assess and learn from reviewing their organisational performance.\  The team has discussed the research and/or collected data with: chief officers, deputy chief officers, principle rural fire officers (NZ), state coordination personnel, regional coordination personnel, and incident management team personnel.\  These personnel represented urban fire brigades, rural fire agencies, land management agencies, state emergency services, council officers with responsibility for search and rescue, the Red Cross and the National Rural Fire Authority (New Zealand).\ \  In addition, we have conducted a number of research studies and observations, including: Literature reviews, semi-structured interviews with senior staff, observations of real-life and simulated events and an online survey.

This has provided the team with information about current practice in decision making, team monitoring and learning from evaluating organisational performance across Australia and New Zealand.\  Comparing current practice to the research literature provides opportunities to develop enhanced methods of developing decision making, monitoring teams and assessing organisational performance.\  For example, using skill-based training to enhance peripheral vision \& memory in decision making, developing breakdown indicators that can indicate a malfunctioning team for team monitoring, and unpacking the values and challenged that enable and constrain learning from reviews of organisational performance.\  These strategies and methods will be investigated, developed and evaluated through close consultation with end-users in the next stages of the project.

}, issn = {126}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin and Keith Fitzgerald and Grunwald, J and Rainbird, Sophia} }