Emergency Management Information System Support Rectifying First Responder Role Abandonment During Extreme Events

摘要

Role abandonment once was considered unlikely by research scientists; however emergency management officials have experienced catastrophic events that counter prior assumptions. Event types such as deluges and pandemics surface as scenarios supporting one set ofexamples. The authors explore a different angle, focusing on individual practitioners including: (1)fire, (2) police and (3) emergency medical services. Surveys were taken by the various practitioner group types. Results suggested that there may be role abandonment issues, differing from one practitioner type to another, each with unique reasons given the event type. Although communities and individual emergency officials may never encounter such situations, it s imperative that this event type be taken into account during the design and implementation of disaster management systems. Systems developed should be designed to support and modify needs given the size and magnitude of the event, be it a routine emergency, a larger disaster or a 'once in a lifetime' catastrophic event. In this case, the authors focus on human resources. It is for this reason that the authors believe that algorithms be identified, developed and implemented so that such information be accessible to emergency officials, should this rare situation arise.