This article first appeared in the Spring 2016 edition of Fire Australia. By Brenda Leahy, Communications Officer, AFAC.
What goes on in the minds of Incident Management Team (IMT) members and their leaders during complex emergencies? How do they communicate and coordinate these thoughts to work with others?
Where are we at? What’s at stake? Are we on the same page? What is the worst that can happen? Are we meeting our priorities? Have all options been considered? These are just some of the types of questions that IMTs and Incident Controllers (ICs) need to ask and address when managing emergencies using the Australasian Inter-Service Incident Management System (AIIMS).
AIIMS is a common platform of emergency management doctrine for managing all types of incidents in Australia. Industry protocols, memoranda of understanding, standing orders and procedures across all agencies and jurisdictions are underpinned by AIIMS doctrine. The system can be adapted and scaled to manage any natural and/or man-made disaster or emergency, from car crashes to bushfires, blue-green algae outbreaks or bio-security threats, as well as to novel and potentially unknown threats. It has been applied effectively during thousands of incidents, including the most catastrophic and tragic disasters in Australia’s recent history.
The ongoing development and revisions of AIIMS reflect the sector’s maturing capability in emergency management. The current AIIMS system encapsulates two decades of learning and experience and review, says AFAC’s CEO Stuart Ellis.
The review of the doctrine has drawn on the insights and evidence from the research of the former Bushfire CRC and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, as well as shifts in thinking and policy from guidance received through reviews and inquiries into recent major emergencies in Australia.
AIIMS incorporates the research on human factors and the impact of human psychology and human behaviour on how incident management teams and incident controllers perform. AFAC member agencies have invested in this research and its utilisation over the past decade. Their investment helps to ensure a robust emergency management system and provides agencies with evidence-based insights and resources for building their response capability. It also equips them to identify and address gaps and opportunities for effective application in all hazards by all agencies.
This research utilisation case study focuses on human factors research conducted by social and behavioural scientists from the former Bushfire CRC for use within AIIMS-4 and its related learner and other support resources.
The research outputs were used to enhance the overall system and have guided development of a growing portfolio of practical, evidence-based learning, training and exercising resources to support application of AIIMS and to assist those developing IMTs for the task.
This case study explains how the research made its way into practice, outlining the approach to utilisation and subsequent adoption by IMTs, as told by the researchers, end users and the key people in between who helped transition the knowledge into practice. Overwhelmingly, they report that agency collaboration through AFAC together with professional development have been the key factors that have driven uptake of the research evidence in practice.
Human factors
Incident Controller Alistair Drayton of Victoria's Country Fire Authority explains how evidence-based techniques from the CRC human factors research in AIIMS-4 assist in making moment-of-truth decisions.
The fire at Wye River - Jamieson Track on Victoria's south-west coast in the lead-up to Christmas Day 2015 had a lot of decision-making pressure points, recalls Mr Drayton, of CFA's Barwon South Western region.
The bushfire started in dense forest within the Otway Ranges that backdrop the Great Ocean Road townships of Wye River, Separation Creek, Cumberland River and Lorne less than a week before the annual influx of thousands of Chirstmas holidaymakers.
Ignited by a lightning strike on a day of extreme fire danger, the bushfire destroyed 116 houses in Wyer River and Separation Creek on Christmas Day and had grown to 2,260 hectares by Boxing Day before it was contained a few weeks later in January.
"With one road in and one road out, and Chirstmas holidaymakers about to surge into the area, it was clear we were dealing with a serious risk," Mr Drayton recalled of making the call to escalate from a level 2 to level 3 incident.
"The predictive tools [PHOENIX RapidFire simulator decision support tool], weather forecasts and fire intensity measurement tools, such as infrared mapping, indicated it could potentially be monstrous," he said.
Mr Drayton said AIIMS-4, IMT training and exercising, participation in professional development workshops and using evidence-based learner resources from human factors research all contributed tohis thinking, decision-making and management approach.
Decision-making in these high-pressured conditions, he said, comes from your 'mental slides' which are shaped through factors such as AIIMS training, development and exercising, together with the memories and experiences learned from previous events. These mental slides are also augmented by information from your team and others.
"You have to think, act and reflect... you find your battle rhythm, remembering to ask yourself what's workign and what's not," said Mr Drayton. "You scale up and you scale down using your slides."
"Communication is vitally important - communications throughout the day. It is essential to have formal briefings and two-way updates up and down and between team members and the key stakeholders."
"In terms of situation awareness, you take a helicopter perspective and ask yourself and your team questions like, what are my challenges, what are the risks?"