Decision Making Support in Emergency Response

Abstract

An emergency event can be chronologically divided into three phases: prevention, response, and investigation. Preventive actions attempt to anticipate all emergency situations and describe procedures intended to avoid undesirable outcomes. Unfortunately, not all circumstances can be predicted and some cannot be avoided. When undesirable situations occur, an emergency response action has to be set off. The response phase is very complex because decisions have to be made in a very short time and sometimes without the desirable information. An investigation usually follows any incident in order to find out the causes of the emergency, assess the effectiveness of the response, and generate recommendations for future preventive and response actions (Ochoa, Neyem, Pino, & Borges, 2006). Concerning the emergency response phase, actions are usually carried out by several teams which should work in a manner as cooperative and articulated as possible to eliminate or reduce the impact of the disaster. These teams usually follow established procedures to deal with emergencies contained in emergency plans. In most events, actions are coordinated centrally but decisions are made at both central and local levels. Information plays an important role in these decisions. According to Dykstra (2003), when things go wrong in emergency management, the reasons are generally related to breakdowns in information, communication, and/or coordination.