Organising for Effective Incident Management (OEIM) research project is funded by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (BCRC) within the research program Managing the Threat.
Research began in 2011 and is based at the University of Tasmania with chief investigator Dr Christine Owen, Post Doctorate Researcher Dr Roshan Bhandari (who relocated from Kyoto University in Japan to UTAS in 2012), several research associates from both UTAS and Central Queensland University, four BCRC PhD scholarship students and two project officers.
Research is overseen by a Steering Committee made up of members of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC).
The OEIM project aims to better understand how multi-agency emergency management coordination above the IMT level can be improved in order to reduce the consequences to communities of the emergency event.
The findings suggest that there is a need to develop strategies to assist personnel to identify, resolve and recover coordination disconnects and breakdowns in a timely way.
One of the challenges facing fire and emergency services agencies today is how to effectively organise for emergency events that involve multiple stakeholders, are large in scale, complex and in which demands can exceed the available resources. In these types of events, breakdowns of information flow and in strategic level coordination are both common and problematic.
The findings from the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission indicated a need to look beyond creating new standard operating procedures or adding to existing role responsibilities. There is a need to develop new theoretical frameworks to better account for the multi-agency emergency management coordination required in complex events and to move the focus of analysis beyond the team to one of multi-layered multiple team and multiple organisation systems.
The purpose of this research is to contribute to this theoretical development by investigating issues surrounding the difficulties (and successes) of interacting in complex teams in order to suggest ways of making such interaction more effective.
Research methods include:
OEIM’s anticipated outcomes include the identification of systems and personal competencies required for sustained strategic incident management. Once identified, these systems and personal competencies can inform the training and organisational development needs analyses required to develop adaptive strategic management capacity.
The emphasis in 2012 is on undertaking empirical research, synthesising the findings to date, as well as on preparing publications to enrich theory development. Research activities will include developing an understanding of the information systems implications, the information-related demands above the IMT and the implications for decision-making and adaptive coordination. The development and testing of simulation scenarios to enhance communication and coordination will also be examined. To promote the utilisation of this research, guidelines will be developed and a number of consultation strategies engaged with relevant industry groups.
More information, publications and videos are available on the BCRC website or alternatively contact the Chief Investigator:
Dr Christine Owen
Telephone: +61 (0) 3 6226 2555
Email: Christine.Owen@UTAS.edu.au