The pre-emergencies project is aimed at developing
an emergency response model with the goals of:
enhancing integration among the various entities
involved in planning and managing response to an emergency;
enhancing communication and information exchange and quality between
response teams and civilians, in crisis situations.
Specifically, the project focus on two specific areas:
progressively mounting risk disaster (e.g., floods) and sudden disaster
(e.g., highway or railroad tunnel accidents). Concerning the latter,
particular attention will be focussed on cross-border disasters, because
they serve to exemplify highly complex, unpredictable, and difficult-to-manage
emergency situations. The project will therefore enable us to pinpoint
the critical elements occurring in cross-border disasters, with the
aim of developing a “common and shared language”.
Phases
of the project
Document
and Literature Analysis
We intend to analyse the literature
on expert, volunteer, and civilian response in risk situations and
various, current national mounting and sudden risk emergency intervention
plans. Our investigation of conduct in risk situations will refer
to the international literature on the theme, with particular attention
focused on practical applications and cases. Our analysis of national
emergency response plans will focus on plans that are currently operative
in the Partner countries, with the aim of establishing parallel and
integrated research work.
Situation
analysis
The aim of
this phase is to analyse the responses and action plans implemented
in real situations that have already occurred in the project’s
two focus areas (mounting risk and sudden disaster).
Results from individual and group interviews conducted
with experts working in crisis situations will be used to investigate
the psychological, structural/environmental, informational and technical
elements that the experts think may have played a crucial role in
the disasters they have experienced. This information will help us
then delineate risk scenarios, by identifying event frames. Moreover,
an elemental analytical process will serve to identify what specific
variables can intervene and modify a changing course of events.
A specific methodology, developed by Carroll (2000),
will be used to devise the scenarios. This methodology has proved
to be particularly useful for simulating complex situations where
human factors play a decisive role in risk management. Visualisation
of key risk scenarios will also help policy makers evaluate both the
efficacy and criticality of the organisational and communicative measures
that are currently in effect in the Partner countries.
Identifying
best practices
The aim of this phase is to develop an in-depth understanding
of practices that lead to positive outcomes in an emergency and to
test their applicability in other contexts. The best practices emerging
from the data gathered during phases 1 and 2 will therefore be classified
in terms of shared categorisation and collected in a database equipped
with a guided search system. These best practices will be described
in detail, in function of a specific emergency’s warning signs,
evolution, and conclusion.
The attention will be focussed on organisational,
coordinative, and chain-of-command elements, which will be evaluated
in relation to response type, response unit type, and achieved outcomes.
Developing
an integrated intervention model
A simulator will be produced to help us develop a
highly flexible and realistic model that will be applicable to a vast
range of disaster types (and therefore, to a wide range of emergency
responses).
Specifically, we intend to use the “behaviour
anticipation method”, which proposes that it is possible to
visualise a situation in both its positive and critical aspects and
intervene (albeit virtually) with solutions emerging from previously
conducted best practice analyses.
Simulation will therefore be aimed at:
Simulation will therefore represent a flexible instrument
for designing an emergency management model, which will be targeted
at developing managerial and technical competencies, testing their
application in realistic contexts, receiving performance feedback,
increasing awareness of emergency responses, and planning co-ordination
and communication. Once tested, the model will be made available to
all who desire to use it (e.g., emergency response trainers) as means
for updating the model itself and/or for visualising all the elements
of an emergency situation.
To this aim, the use of simulation as a valuable
decision-making instrument in human resource management has already
been validated by the one of the partners (Sinergie, in Italy) over
the course of the European Leonardo II “ASMAP” (Approche
Strategique du Management du Personnel) programme. This same method
and instrument will be used as the base for producing the simulator.
Simulation represents our premise for producing an
applicable model that will be validated in the next phase and will
be implemented in emergency response planning and worker training.
We shall therefore use only software with a well-known and easily
updatable programming language (html, php, etc… ).
The simulator’s target users will be policy
makers, disaster managers, and policy makers.
Simulator
training and outcome validation
The simulator-visualised outcomes will be applied
experimentally during Italian Red Cross field training, in relation
to the two research areas of mounting and sudden risk disasters. Hence,
this phase will be dedicated to the testing and validation of emergency
response methods, instruments, procedures, and protocols. Training
will be structured over the course of several workdays and subdivided
as follows: a training workshop on the aims, applied methods, and
outcomes learned over the course of the project; briefings; post-emergency
field simulation, and debriefings.
Concerning field-testing, a project plan will be
developed to demonstrate the integrated execution of a response in
all of its phases—from the moment the emergency call arrives
through reponse conclusion, by defining:
Debriefing will allow not only for the immediate
restitution of outcomes to the emergency units, but the real-time
adjustment and modification of the project’s outcomes and instruments.
The project’s partner countries will participate
in training, but training will also be open to other agencies and
institutions/authorities that have been contacted over the course
of the project and have shown a strong interest in testing the proposed
model. Training will therefore represent an important occasion for
the international dissemination of results
Additional informations can be found to the Pre -
Emergencies internet website
http://www.cri.piemonte.it/progetti/pre-emergencies/
Otherwise, you can directly contact the project's
coordinator
