Perceptions and performances of experienced incident commanders

Abstract

Rescue operations have been organized in accordance with strict hierarchical management structures for decades. There seem to be minor differences between emergency response units within and between countries with respect to formalized routines and command structure. This presupposes that the incident commander is important for the emergency response performance and the actual outcome of the crisis. This paper presents findings from a study carried out in Norway, Sweden and Bosnia‐Herzegovina, designed to reveal the assessments carried out by incident commanders and other professional leaders of emergency response units, the police, paramedics and fire brigade. The study encompasses aspects of naturalistic decision making in the different accident response phases. On call‐out, the leaders constructed their mental maps of the situations from a combination of information from the call center, knowledge of standard procedures, their expectation of available resources and personal knowledge of the site. Typical management strategies involved incremental problem solving within narrow time horizons. The incident commanders were more concerned with details than with evaluating the overall situation. In general, the commanders expected normal situations, i.e. typical accidents they were trained to cope with and in response to which their preparations and strategies were standard. Our study shows that these incident command strategies are more reactive than proactive, and that the commanders rarely command. Risk management is limited to evaluations of the response units' safety.

Keywords:

• emergency management
• rescue operations
• incident commander
• naturalistic decision making
• uncertainty

Notes

1. The principles of the crisis management structure are quite similar worldwide but the holders of key roles may vary. For example, in Sweden, the incident commander is a fire department officer.

2. The researcher in the field observation has more than 20 years' experience as on‐scene commander.

3. Five of the observations are reconstructions of incidents that were personal experiences of one of the researchers working as incident commander.

4. The event numbers are shown in brackets and referred to in Figure 4.

5. A traditional career in the Norwegian fire departments is based on number of years of experience, so that commanders ‘grow’ into leadership.

6. In this case, one of the researchers was the IC.