@article {bnh-2314, title = {Practical decision tools for improved decision-making in complex, time-constrained and multi-team environments: Annual project report 2014-2015}, number = {126}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This annual report presents information about the Bushfire and Natural Hazard CRC funded project: Cognitive Decision Strategies, which is concerned with decision making, team monitoring and organisational performance in emergency management.\ 

As the incidents associated with natural hazards increase in complexity, duration, and the number of agencies involved, there is likely to be an increased frequency of degraded operational situations, breakdowns within and between teams and the occurrence of errors. These problems will play out within the context of a decreasing tolerance in the community and their political representatives to emergency management coordination failure.\  The current project has three main research streams that aim to: Provide enhanced methods of making decisions in complex situations; develop methods to better monitor teams to detect breakdowns and disconnects that can impair operational performance; and to develop enhanced methods for agencies to evaluate and learn from their operational performance.

Towards this end the research team have visited 18 agencies in Australia and New Zealand to collect data and discuss the issues around decision making, team monitoring and to identify how agencies currently assess and learn from reviewing their organisational performance.\  The team has discussed the research and/or collected data with: chief officers, deputy chief officers, principle rural fire officers (NZ), state coordination personnel, regional coordination personnel, and incident management team personnel.\  These personnel represented urban fire brigades, rural fire agencies, land management agencies, state emergency services, council officers with responsibility for search and rescue, the Red Cross and the National Rural Fire Authority (New Zealand).\ \  In addition, we have conducted a number of research studies and observations, including: Literature reviews, semi-structured interviews with senior staff, observations of real-life and simulated events and an online survey.

This has provided the team with information about current practice in decision making, team monitoring and learning from evaluating organisational performance across Australia and New Zealand.\  Comparing current practice to the research literature provides opportunities to develop enhanced methods of developing decision making, monitoring teams and assessing organisational performance.\  For example, using skill-based training to enhance peripheral vision \& memory in decision making, developing breakdown indicators that can indicate a malfunctioning team for team monitoring, and unpacking the values and challenged that enable and constrain learning from reviews of organisational performance.\  These strategies and methods will be investigated, developed and evaluated through close consultation with end-users in the next stages of the project.

}, issn = {126}, author = {Christopher Bearman and Brooks, B and Owen, Christine and Steve Curnin and Keith Fitzgerald and Grunwald, J and Rainbird, Sophia} }