management coping problem in emergency situations - II [1]

 

Foreseen and unforeseen emergencies

A usual intention is to be as prepared as possible. Planning and training are aimed to prepare for a wide range of emergencies. Experience shows two things.

 The first is that people have difficulties in anticipating the worst cases. It seems as if people for different reasons often are not capable of imagining drastic and bad situations.  Therefore planning and training often are too limited.

 The other is that emergencies do not develop exactly as the emergency planning presupposes.

 The conclusion is that the capacity to shape the management in the specific situation determined by the specific emergency is very important. Three main domains can be seen as basic conditions in shaping the management of the specific  situation.

 The first is the planning and the preparedness. This domain can be more or less developed. Well done and up-to-date planning and preparedness are a good condition to start from. In this there is training too.

 The second is knowledge of the emergency as a more or less dynamic or static situation, of the management as a process and of the resources.

 The third is the emergency and its specific characteristics.

 The central core of the management coping problem

The central core of the reasoning is that the solution to the management problems in a specific emergency depends on

1) the quality of the planning and the preparedness,

2)the state of the knowledge and understanding of different emergency types and of the processes of emergency management, and

3) the type, extent, dynamics and complexity of the specific emergency.

The coping problem is to make an optimal solution based on these three conditions.

 The basic idea is that planning can be performed separately from and before the course of events for which the planning is intended. The sequence is planning, implementing and following up.

 When an emergency occurs and emergency management has to start there is another basic condition for the planning. The dynamic of the real world and the interaction with this has already started when the management and its planning processes start.  The idea of the management process is the sequence of sizing up, countering and following up.

 Emergency management consists of partly the pre-emergency planning and preparation processes (based on the assumptions of the sequence of planning, implementing and following up), and partly of the ad hoc coping processes as an answer to the occurred emergency (based on the assumptions of the sequence of sizing up, countering and following up).

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REFERENCES:

[1] Lars Fredholm, Emergency management as co-ordinated cognitive modelling on different time-scales

Department of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Sweden, Report 3111, Lund 1999