@article {bnh-6839, title = {A case study of disaster decision-making in the presence of anomalies and absence of recognition}, journal = {Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management}, year = {2020}, month = {04/2020}, abstract = {

This paper provides an insight into the complexities of decision-making during an unprecedented disaster. We used the critical decision method to explore a series of decision points that were made for a low probability yet high consequence decision that was made by the commander of the Australian Urban Search and Rescue team deployed to Fukushima in 2011. The findings identified that in a situation with no similarities to previous experiences, the commander used a process of anomaly detection to trigger a situational assessment, following this with mental simulation and consultation of his actions. In this unparalleled case study, hazard-specific expertise also supported the decision-making process. The paper offers practitioners and academia an example of high consequence decision-making in a unique situation as well as the opportunity to reflect on the models of decision-making previously identified as useful in these operational environments.

}, keywords = {crisis management, Decision making, Disaster management, hazards}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12290}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-5973.12290}, author = {Steve Curnin and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine} } @article {bnh-6537, title = {Decision making, team monitoring \& organisational learning in emergency management annual report 2018-2019}, number = {531}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This project explores aspects of teamwork, decision making and organisational learning with the aim of better supporting people working in complex strategic operations centres.\  We have adopted a human-centred design method to produce practical tools that are designed around how people use these tools in their workplace.\  As part of this process end-users are embedded into the research process. Bringing end-users into the research process creates a partnership where the researchers contribute their knowledge of literature, theory and the research process and the end-users contribute their requirements, operational knowledge and understanding of the barriers to utilisation and adoption.\  Using the human-centred design method we have created a number of practical tools that are at various stages of development.\  These tools focus on managing teams, how to make better decisions, and how to better utilise the products of research.\  For the tools that have reached (or are close to reaching) the end of their evaluation we have also developed training to support their use by end-users.\  We have seen extensive operational use by end-users of the tools we have developed, with a number of agencies amending their standard operating procedures to facilitate use of the tools. \ In addition, research from the project has formed the basis of several key publications (e.g. the Resilience Expert Advisory Group{\textquoteright}s {\textquotedblleft}A practical guide for crisis decision making.{\textquotedblright}). Into the future we will be continuing to develop new tools to support teamwork, decision making and organisational learning and expect to see further utilisation by agencies both in Australia and worldwide.

}, keywords = {Decision making, education, Emergency management, teams}, issn = {531}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin and Peter Hayes and Heather Stuart} } @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-7801, title = {Improving decision making, teamwork and organisational learning in emergency management {\textendash} final project report}, number = {641}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Background: Each year Australian emergency management organisations coordinate the response to thousands of emergency events. While a successful outcome is achieved in the vast majority of these events, notable and ongoing concerns are being raised as to how well some of the emergency management teams have functioned.\  Often the problems are not based on technical skills (such as the use of equipment) but on the non-technical skills, such as: communication, coordination, situation awareness, and decision making. In addition, skills such as creativity and divergent thinking may be important in helping people to manage ever more complex emergencies. This project seeks to develop simple practical tools that can help people to better manage their teamwork, improve their decision making and develop more creative solutions.\  In addition to developing these tools this project also considers how organisations utilise the outcomes of research.\  Application of research in support of organisational learning is critical not just for organisational growth, competitiveness and sustainability but also for wide-scale industry development, community and economic well-being. However, maximising organisational learning from research often falls short. As part of this project we will seek to develop a tool to help agencies to utilise research more effectively.

Method: The tools were developed using a human-centred design approach. This approach placed the end-user very much at the heart of the development process so that the tools were effectively co-created with end-users. Embedding end-users into the research and design process has two goals, 1) to produce effective tools that are designed around the end-user and 2) to create the right context for the adoption of the tools by emergency management agencies. In this way we have brought utilisation to the centre of the project, embedding it within the research process so that utilisation informs and is informed by the research from the beginning of the project.

Research and tool development: A number of tools were developed to help people to better manage their teamwork and decision making. These tools include:

In addition to creating tools that help better manage teams and make more effective decisions, members of the project team have also developed methods to help people to act more creatively during operations (such as stretch thinking loops for team decision making). To help end-users to diagnose their capacity to utilise research a self-assessment tool was developed (known as the self-assessment research utilisation maturity matrix or RUMM). This tool can be used by practitioners to identify steps needed to move along the path towards research implementation.

Utilisation: These tools have now seen excellent utilisation by emergency management agencies in Australia and have attracted growing interest from international partners in the UK and Spain.\  The teamwork tools have been used to help manage both simulated and real-life emergencies; to conduct debriefs and after-action reviews; to design response plans; and to evaluate emergency management arrangements. The research utilisation maturity matrix (RUMM) has been used to inform future research planning, to assess existing capability in research utilisation and to inform future policy decisions.\  The tools that we have created have been included in a number of key industry publications (such as AFAC Lessons Management Handbook) and a number of agencies have changed their standard operating procedures to facilitate use of the tools.

Conclusion and next steps: This project has developed a number of products that can help people in emergency management to better manage non-technical skills, improve creativity and assess their ability to utilise the products of research.\  The next steps are to help agencies to better embed these tools so that they become part of normal everyday business.

}, keywords = {Decision making, Emergency management, organisational learning, teamwork}, issn = {641}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin and Peter Hastings and Heather Stuart} } @article {bnh-6782, title = {Progress report on case study CBD precinct}, number = {552}, year = {2020}, month = {03/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The CRC Project A9 entitled {\textquotedblleft}Cost-Effective Mitigation Strategy Development for Building Related Earthquake Risk{\textquotedblright} is seeking to address the need for an evidence base to inform decision making on the mitigation of the earthquake risk posed by vulnerable Australian buildings. It aims to develop information related to more vulnerable Australian building types in the following areas:

This project also includes a case study to demonstrate the utility of the research with central Melbourne identified as the locality. Central Melbourne has a concentration of older unreinforced masonry buildings so the case study will examine the current risk posed by these and how they can be mitigated through application of the measures developed in this CRC project. Significantly this project will link to the concluding utilisation project on York and will integrate research outcomes on heritage value to be developed by the CRC project {\textquotedblleft}Economics of Natural Hazards{\textquotedblright} led by the University of Western Australia. This progress report describes the scope, the research elements and status of these, and the process by which they are being integrated into the final research outcomes. It also provides background to a requested variation to delay the final deliverable and associated CRC payment to enable other research outputs to be integrated.

This report corresponds with the 30 September 2019 project milestone deliverable {\textquotedblleft}Progress Report on Case Study CBSD Precinct{\textquotedblright}, BNHCRC reference 3.1.2.

}, keywords = {buildings, cbd, Decision making, earthquake risk, mitigation}, issn = {552}, author = {Hyeuk Ryu and Martin Wehner and Mark Edwards and Itismita Mohanty} } @article {bnh-6566, title = {Using the human centred design method to develop tools for non-technical skills in emergency management}, number = {532}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2020}, institution = {Bushfire \& Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Human Centred Design (HCD) is a widely used design process that seeks to ensure that products are designed to efficiently and effectively support the needs of the human user.\  At the heart of the HCD process is an iterative cycle of development and testing in conjunction with end-users.\  This places the humans who play such a central role in emergency management at the centre of the design activity.\  The BNHCRC project: team monitoring, decision making and organisational learning has used the human centred design approach to develop a number of tools that support human decision making and team management during emergencies.\  This report introduces the human centred design process and shows how it was used to develop the decision making and team management tools.

}, keywords = {Decision making, education, Emergency management, human centred design, team management}, issn = {532}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin} } @conference {bnh-6525, title = {Climate change as an emerging disaster risk in Australia and Oceania }, booktitle = {AFAC19 powered by INTERSCHUTZ - Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Research Forum}, year = {2019}, month = {12/2019}, publisher = {Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience}, organization = {Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Climate change is recurrently cited as the most important perceived challenge of this century (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; Watts et al. 2017). Yet, the perceptions of the risk of climate change, its societal impacts, ramifications and particularly the solutions needed to address it require further investigation.

This study profiles regional emergency and disaster management professional{\textquoteright}s perceptions of climate change as an emerging disaster risk in Australia and Oceania. We aimed to examine what evidence exists to support decision making and profile the nature, type and potential human impact of climate change as an emerging disaster risk in Australia and Oceania.

Download the full non-peer reviewed research proceedings\ from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Research Forumhere.

}, keywords = {Climate change, Decision making, disaster, Emergency management}, url = {https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/australian-journal-of-emergency-management-monograph-series/}, author = {Cuthbertson, Joseph} } @article {bnh-7474, title = {New human capabilities in emergency and crisis management: From non-technical skills to creativity}, journal = {Australian Journal of Emergency Management}, volume = {34}, year = {2019}, month = {10/2019}, abstract = {

Unprecedented future disaster events will require emergency managers to be creative in their thinking. The backbone of creativity is divergent thinking; cognitive thoughts that do not converge on one correct answer but diverge to a range of possible options. Preliminary research with emergency services organisations, not-for-profit organisations and the critical infrastructure sector identified an increase in creative output when personnel are given a set of constraints, both resources and context, in which to {\textquoteright}think divergently{\textquoteright}. Consequently, future challenges for decision-makers in emergency and crisis management is identifying when creativity is required and how to use constraints to enhance creativity when organisational cultures demand compliance. This paper provides an overview of creativity in the context of decision-making and what this means for future leaders in the sector.

}, keywords = {Decision making, disaster, emergecny managment, future, organisations}, url = {https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/ajem-october-2019-new-human-capabilities-in-emergency-and-crisis-management-from-non-technical-skills-to-creativity/}, author = {Brooks, B and Steve Curnin and Owen, Christine and Jason Boldeman} } @conference {bnh-6330, title = {Post-Disaster Decision Making in Road Infrastructure Recovery Projects - An Interview Study with Practitioners in Queensland}, booktitle = {Australian \& New Zealand Disaster \& Emergency Management Conference}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, abstract = {

The repair and reconstruction of road infrastructure plays a vital role in the recovery process after a disaster event and will be affected by the decision-making processes adopted by asset owners. The objective of this study is to understand how road asset owners assess and prioritise road reconstruction projects in order to identify how decision making could be improved in real-life post-disaster scenarios. This paper presents results of in-depth interviews with road infrastructure practitioners in Queensland, on decision making in a post-disaster context, using a case study based approach. A number of challenges were identified including the lack of a common decision making platform, the lack of focus on the socio-ecological impacts during decision making and the importance of community engagement during the reconstruction process.

}, keywords = {Decision making, Disaster management, Natural hazards, Reconstruction, Road infrastructure}, url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333842851_Post-Disaster_Decision_Making_in_Road_Infrastructure_Recovery_Projects_-_An_Interview_Study_with_Practitioners_in_Queensland}, author = {Akvan Gajanayake and Tehmina Khan and Kevin Zhang} } @mastersthesis {bnh-4630, title = {Simulated Self-Paced Wildfire Suppression Work in Different Thermal Conditions}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, pages = {236}, school = {Deakin University}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

There is a substantial body of research investigating the influence of ambient temperature on sport and exercise performance. However, research investigating the effect of heat on the performance of manual-handling work, as performed by personnel across many physically demanding occupations, is relatively scarce. Wildland firefighters are commonly tasked with performing manual-handling work under conditions of high ambient heat, and will likely do so more frequently under a continually warming climate. Heat-related illness also currently represents a substantial threat to the safety and wellbeing of wildland firefighters when on duty. Understanding the role of ambient heat in moderating firefighter performance may be important for wildland fire agencies in forecasting the effectiveness of their workforce. Further, quantifying the physiological response of firefighters working in such conditions may assist in preventing heat-related incidents on the fireground. Therefore, assessing the influence of hot ambient conditions on the work output of wildland firefighters, as well as the magnitude of their thermoregulatory and cardiovascular response, was the primary focus of this thesis. Due to the inherent variability of wildfire behaviour, and the subsequent difficulty in measuring work performance in an operational setting, the current program of research utilised high-fidelity work simulations to assess changes in work output in response to ambient heat. Study 1 investigated the self-selected work output of wildland firefighters in both temperate (18{\textdegree}C) and hot (32{\textdegree}C) ambient conditions over a six-hour simulated shift, and indices of thermal stress (e.g., core temperature) and exertion (e.g., heart rate) were measured. Study 2 reported the cumulative effect of ambient heat on the work performance and physiological response of wildland firefighters performing three consecutive days of simulated wildfire suppression. Finally, Study 3 measured the self-selected work output and thermoregulatory responses of wildland firefighters performing a raking task in both 45{\textdegree}C and 18{\textdegree}C conditions. The adaptive behaviours of firefighters (e.g., in ad-libitum fluid intake) were also documented during all studies. Collectively, the results from these studies provides novel insight into the operational effectiveness of wildland firefighters under a range of ambient conditions, and their concurrent physiological and behavioural responses.\ 

}, keywords = {Decision making, emergency management., exposure, firefighter, fires, temperature}, url = {http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30082763/larsen-simulatedself-2015A.pdf}, author = {Larsen, Brianna} } @article {BF-4277, title = {Householders{\textquoteright} safety-related decisions, plans, actions and outcomes during the 7 February 2009 Victorian (Australia) wildfires}, journal = {Fire Safety Journal}, volume = {61}, year = {2013}, month = {10/2013}, pages = {175-184}, chapter = {175}, abstract = {This study examined decisions made by householders under wildfire threat. Data were obtained from interviews with survivors of severe wildfires in Victoria (Australia) on 7 February 2009 which killed 172 civilians and destroyed more than 2000 homes. Prior to this, Australian fire agency community wildfire safety policy was that residents should: {\textquoteleft}Prepare, stay and defend or leave early{\textquoteright}. Most of the 223 interviewees who stayed and defended did so because this was their wildfire safety plan, and they believed that they would be successful despite the predicted extreme fire danger weather. In 79\% of cases, defence was successful; for the remaining 21\% the house was destroyed and several lives were imperilled. Of the 216 who left for a safer location only 39\% said that this was their wildfire safety plan; for most, the action of leaving was triggered by realisation of the imminent threat posed by the fire; 36\% self-evacuated under hazardous conditions. The findings suggest that community wildfire safety programs should emphasize: (a) the risks associated with staying to defend a property; and (b) how householders should prepare in order to leave safely if a fire threatens.}, keywords = {Community wildfire safety, Decision making, Evacuation, Property defence, Risk perception, Wildfire survival}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2013.09.003}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037971121300146X}, author = {Jim McLennan and Elliott, Glenn and Omodei, Mary and J Whittaker} }