Negotiating the 'trading zone'. Creating a shared information infrastructure in the Dutch public safety sector

Our main concern in this article is whether nation-wide information technology (IT) infrastructures or systems in emergency response and disaster management are the solution to the communication problems the safety sector suffers from. It has been argued that implementing nation-wide IT systems will help to create shared cognition and situational awareness among relief workers. We put this claim to the test by presenting a case study on the introduction of ‘netcentric work’, an IT system-based platform aiming at the creation of situational awareness for professionals in the safety sector in the Netherlands. The outcome of our research is that the negotiation with relevant stakeholders by the Dutch government has lead to the emergence of several fragmented IT systems. It becomes clear that a top-down implementation strategy for a single nation-wide information system will fail because of the fragmentation of the Dutch safety sector it is supposed to be a solution to. As the US safety sector is at least as fragmented as its Dutch counterpart, this may serve as a caveat for the introduction of similar IT systems in the US

Tsunami preparedness communication : understanding the business audience : a research report completed in partial fulfilment of the Master of Communication degree at Massey University, Wellington

Previous research conducted by GNS Science pre and post the 2016 Kaikōura Quake identified that the New Zealand public does not sufficiently understand the risks posed by tsunami hazards, and in particular there is limited awareness about the different responses required for local, regional, and distant-source tsunami events. This research was undertaken to delve deeper and generate new insights into the reasons behind that finding, specifically for one key audience: business leaders. This audience was primarily chosen because businesses play a key interdependent role in disaster response and community recovery. An audience-centred communication approach was chosen over the traditional mass communication approach most often applied in emergency management practice to date. A qualitative approach was selected because of its ability to provide complementary data to existing quantitative studies. Data were collected from twelve business-focussed community leaders, and business owners/senior managers in coastal Tauranga (Pāpāmoa) and Wellington (Rongotai), through a series of semi-structured interview conversations and email questionnaires. The data gathering instruments were designed to better understand the participants’: (1) tsunami knowledge and awareness; (2) tsunami risk perception; (3) existing tsunami preparedness; and (4) behavioural intent for future tsunami preparedness initiatives. Field observations and engagement with emergency management professionals provided greater depth of understanding and enhanced the contextual aspects of the research. The overall findings and themes emerging from this research suggest that: ● As indicated in the wider survey, there is a lack of tsunami awareness and preparedness among the business audience More specifically in the audience-centred context: ● There is confusion surrounding the roles and responsibilities of official emergency management organisations ● There is a need for improved organisational Health & Safety understanding and compliance concerning natural hazards in the business community ● Different stakeholders, even within the business audience, have different tsunami preparedness wants and needs The research also identified that: ● Some business leaders are willing to act as conduits for tsunami preparedness in their organisations and communities; viewing it as part of their identity and responsibility as a business leader. Specific suggestions for improved tsunami preparedness communication include: ● Ongoing stakeholder engagement and tsunami education with proactive ‘opinion leaders’ in the business community ● Adopting further targeted audience-centred approaches to improve the spread of preparedness messages through society ● A revision of existing official tsunami preparedness material and tsunami mapping to better meet the needs of end users, such as with customised co-developed material for business community needs in different regions ● Enhancing preparedness communication through the researcher’s ‘Five C’s Model

Understanding The Decision-Making Process of Local Level Emergency Managers and Future Impacts of Social Data

During the course of a natural disaster, affected populations turn to different avenues to attempt to communicate their needs and locations while emergency managers are faced with the task of making quick decisions to aid in the response effort. The decisions that emergency managers face are affected by factors such as available resources, responder safety, and source of information. In this research, we interview emergency managers about the 2009 North American Ice Storm and a flooding event in late April of 2017 to understand the decisions made and the factors that affected these decisions. Using these interviews, a list of interview questions using the Critical Decision Method were created that could be used to more deeply understand the decisions and decision-making process of a local-level emergency manager during a disaster response event. Additionally, animations were created to illustrate the comparative effectiveness of disaster response routing plans developed with and without the consideration of social data based on data inspired by a real event

Alcohol, assault and licensed premises in inner-city areas

This report contains eight linked feasibility studies conducted in Cairns during 2010. These exploratory studies examine the complex challenges of compiling and sharing information about incidents of person-to-person violence in a late night entertainment precinct (LNEP). The challenges were methodological as well as logistical and ethical. The studies look at how information can be usefully shared, while preserving the confidentiality of those involved. They also examine how information can be compiled from routinely collected sources with little or no additional resources, and then shared by the agencies that are providing and using the information.Although the studies are linked, they are also stand-alone and so can be published in peer-reviewed literature. Some have already been published, or are ‘in press’ or have been submitted for review. Others require the NDLERF board’s permission to be published as they include data related more directly to policing, or they include information provided by police.The studies are incorporated into the document under section headings. In each section, they are introduced and then presented in their final draft form. The final published form of each paper, however, is likely to be different from the draft because of journal and reviewer requirements. The content, results and implications of each study are discussed in summaries included in each section.Funded by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, an initiative of the National Drug StrategyAlan R Clough (PhD) School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Sciences James Cook UniversityCharmaine S Hayes-Jonkers (BPsy, BSocSci (Hon1)) James Cook University, Cairns.Edward S Pointing (BPsych) James Cook University, Cairns

Shipboard Crisis Management: A Case Study.

The loss of the "Green Lily" in 1997 is used as a case study to highlight the characteristics of escalating crises. As in similar safety critical industries, these situations are unpredictable events that may require co-ordinated but flexible and creative responses from individuals and teams working in stressful conditions. Fundamental skill requirements for crisis management are situational awareness and decision making. This paper reviews the naturalistic decision making (NDM) model for insights into the nature of these skills and considers the optimal training regimes to cultivate them. The paper concludes with a review of the issues regarding the assessment of crisis management skills and current research into the determination of behavioural markers for measuring competence

Skills for multiagency responses to international crises

Overview Australian responses to international, complex emergencies and humanitarian crises, generated by natural disaster, conflicts or incidents, demand the coordinated responses of multiple civil-military-police actors and agencies. A scoping study of Australian government agency training needs in the latter half of 2013 indicated that stakeholder agencies continue to have difficulty in identifying and developing individual skills to enable people to operate effectively in a high-pressure crisis environment that requires an integrated civil-military-police response. Agencies highlighted the need to develop a ‘whole-of-government’ set of skills for civil-military-police interaction that would complement agency specific skills. In 2015, the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) commissioned Sustineo to undertake a project to address this gap. This report, based on Sustineo’s research and consultations, goes some way to identifying the skills needed for effective civil-military-police interaction. However, the list is not exhaustive. In fact, the report highlights the difficulty of articulating a specific set of multiagency, cross-cutting skills for civil-military-police interaction. Practitioners gave consistent advice that specific skills were less important than other factors in successful civil-military-police interaction. Skills and training are only one component of success. The factors that can facilitate and enhance civil-military-police interaction and the strategies required to address those factors are much broader. The report highlights some of these broader factors and how they interrelate. It identifies the interdependence of individual knowledge, skills and attributes, the value of building relationships, the importance of tolerance and understandings of difference and the need for trust and credibility. The report concludes that an individual’s ability to operate effectively in a civil-military-police environment is developed both prior to and during a mission or deployment and relates more to the type of person and their relationships than to specific skills. Generic skills and attributes for effective civil-military-police interaction Common and shared goals Situational awareness Understanding of whole-of-government Personal attributes such as flexibility, resilience and working in a team Professional skills, such as negotiation, mediation, conflict management and partnership brokering Existing professional relationships and networks Trust Self-awareness (and social and emotional intelligence) Tolerance of diversity (including of organisational differences and cultural diversity). The report identifies considerations for developing people for deployments and it is hoped that these will inform agencies’ training and development strategies. The findings support the ongoing work that the ACMC is undertaking to develop an Australian Government Preparedness Framework (the Framework). The Framework will draw together several streams of work that are interrelated, including this report, to further build Australia’s whole-of-government effectiveness in responding to disasters and complex emergencies overseas

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio