- Title:
-
Implications of Decision Theory for Emergency Services and Application within the SA Metropolitan Fire Service
- Date:
- September 2008
- Organisations
- SAMFS
- Authors:
-
D. Launder
Research abstract - Location:
- South Australia, SA, Australia
Overview
The International Bushfire Research Conference - Incorporating the 15th annual AFAC Conference.
Along with the Armed forces, Emergency Services are often held up as industry examples where personnel are required to make critical decisions, under time pressure and with potentially severe consequences when mistakes are made.
Both the military and emergency settings have accordingly generated a significant body of research and literature.
Over the past two decades, and often in response to coronial investigations, research has increasingly focused on the direct review of actions and behaviours of incident managers. Researchers including Klein in the United States and Flin and Crichton in the UK have challenged longstanding theories of how decisions are made in high-stress,
low-time settings and have placed greater emphasis on the elements of intuition and previous experience on the fire-ground.
As the implications of this increasing body of research have become better understood, a number of Emergency Services Organisations (ESO) have attempted to improve the decision-making of their personnel through a variety of programs and initiatives. This paper reviews some of the major decision-making theories being applied within Emergency
settings and the implications for ESOs in the areas of Operational Policy, Procedure and Practice, Training and Development of Personnel and Reflective Practice. Also discussed are initiatives being developed or trialled by the South Australian Metropolitan
Fire Service (MFS) to improve the quality of organisational decision-making along with broader
practice in both operational and corporate settings.
