From common operational picture to common situational understanding: An analysis based on practitioner perspectives

The concepts of Situational Awareness (SA) and Common Operational Picture (COP) are closely related and well-acknowledged to be crucial factors for effective emergency management. In multi-agency operations, such as extreme weather events, the involved first responders manage the event with different mandates, objectives, and tools which can make it challenging to build a COP. Effective collaboration requires a common situational understanding, based on knowledge about each other’s responsibilities and tasks, mutual respect and trust, as well as common communication tools for emergency communication and information sharing. This paper argues that the COP serves as a basis for deciding on further action, and thus represents a first stage in the process of establishing common situational understanding among the involved actors. The empirical basis for the study includes interviews with Norwegian emergency management stakeholders, analysis of audio-logs, and review of public documents. Based on the analysis we present a framework comprising activities and processes involved in establishing a COP as a basis for common situational understanding.publishedVersio

From Common Operational Picture to Common Situational Understanding : A Framework for Information Sharing in Multi-Organizational Emergency Management

Complex emergencies such as natural disasters are increasing in frequency and scope, in all regions of the world. These emergencies have devastating impacts on people, property, and the environment. Responding to these events and reducing their impact requires that emergency management organizations (EMOs) collaborate in their operations. Complex emergencies require extraordinary efforts from EMOs and often should be handled beyond ordinary routines and structures. Such operations involving multiple stakeholders are typically characterized by inadequate information sharing, decision-making problems, limited situational awareness (SA), and lack of common situational understanding. Despite a high volume of research on these challenges, evaluations from complex disasters and large-scale exercises document that there are still several unsolved issues related to information sharing and the development of common situational understanding. Examples here include fulfillment of heterogeneous information needs, employment of different communication tools and processes with limited interoperability, and information overload resulting from a lack of mechanisms for filtering irrelevant information. Multi-organizational emergency management is an established area of research focusing on how to successfully collaborate and share information for developing common situational understanding. However, the level of complexity and situational dependencies between the involved EMOs create challenges for researchers. An important element for efficient collaboration and information sharing is building and maintaining a common operational picture (COP). Sharing important information is a key element in emergency management involving several EMOs, and both static and dynamic information must be accessible to perform tasks effectively during emergency response. To be proactive and mitigate the emergency impacts requires up-to-date information, both factual information via the COP and the ability to share interpretations and implications through using a communication system for rapid verbal negotiation. The overall research objective is to investigate how stakeholders perceive and develop SA and COP, and to explore and understand key requirements for stakeholders to develop a common situational understanding in complex multi-organizational emergency management.publishedVersio