Editorial: International Journal of Emergency Services, volume 13, Issue 3

Citation

Wankhade, P. (2024), "Editorial: International Journal of Emergency Services, volume 13, Issue 3", International Journal of Emergency Services, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 197-200. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJES-10-2024-093

We are excited to present the editorial for the third and final issue of Volume 13 in 2024. In this shorter issue, the International Journal of Emergency Services (IJES) is publishing six original articles exploring key issues facing the emergency ambulance, police and fire and rescue services globally, covering three continents.

Out of the six articles, five papers address important topics within the emergency services domain, notably growing use of social media as a public engagement tool in building civic engagement during the pandemic, the evolving use of social media and its negative consequences, economic evaluation of psychological surveillance and support programmes, building logistics capabilities and operational agility during emergencies and fire hazard management in dining properties. The final paper covers the important issue of quantifying the relationship between residential mobility and fire service call volumes during healthcare emergencies. All the papers importantly contribute to the body of knowledge in the field of emergency services management, thereby improving scholarly and practitioner understanding of the field (Wankhade and Murphy, 2023).

The first article is entitled, “Navigating the digital beat: a review of social media as a public engagement tool in policing”, and is co-authored by Liam Ralph, Ian C. Elliot, Joane Murphy and Russ Glennon. It explores the changing nature of social media use as a public engagement tool by police services through a comprehensive review of academic databases, which are analysed in relation to 3 decades (2000–2020) to demonstrate how the use of social media has evolved over time. The study highlights underlying dynamics of engagement and retrenchment, which offer important insights for how public engagement and value creation in policing and, more generally, the emergency services are understood. The article demonstrates how the police and other public services should respond to the growing use of social media by the public to maximise value creation whilst minimising the threats that come from potential value destruction (Capriotti et al., 2021; Caba Perez et al., 2012).

In our second article, Diego Ravenda, Maika Melina Valencia-Silva, Josep Maria Argiés-Bosch and Josep García-Blandón investigate the role of social media communication strategies of Spanish hospitals during health emergencies, focusing on their role in crisis management and public information dissemination. In their paper entitled, “Social media in healthcare emergency management: insights from Spanish hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic”, the authors highlight factors that potentially influence these strategies and provide theoretical justifications for them in highlighting the variation in communication strategies among different hospital categories. Automatic topic modelling and deep learning sentiment analysis were applied to analyse over 150,000 posts from 274 hospital Facebook pages between March 2020 and February 2022. Regression analyses were used to explore the relationships between topics, sentiment scores and hospital characteristics. Data analysis revealed nine main topics, with the three most prevalent included vaccine information, security measures and situational updates in relation to the pandemic. This indicates that Spanish hospitals significantly relied on Facebook to manage the emergency and the communication strategies were dynamically adapted to the intensity of the pandemic and varied across hospital types. The study underscores the imperative for stricter guidelines and regulations to guarantee consistent and reliable communication during emergencies (Torpan et al., 2023; Liu, 2021), providing valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers aimed at developing effective health communication strategies on social media.

The important but currently under-researched issue of the mediating effect of logistics capabilities in the relationship between co-evolution, organisation capacity building and operational agility is next examined by Henry Mutebi, Moses Muhwezi, Pontius Byarugaba, Ssekajja S. Mayanja, Wilbroad Aryatwijuka and Sharon Brenda Munduru. In their article entitled, “Co-evolution, organizational capacity building, logistics capabilities and operational agility during health emergencies”, the authors argue how logistics capabilities are not merely peripheral elements but integral components that significantly shape operational agility. Variance-based structural equation models were used to test direct and indirect hypotheses across 45 on government and private health facilities in Kampala City, Uganda. The respondents were 140 nurses and doctors recruited through disproportionate stratified random sampling. By establishing a positive and significant relationship between logistics capabilities and operational agility, the research underscores the critical role of logistics in influencing system responsiveness and adaptability during times of emergency using a complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework to introduce a nuanced understanding of mediation dynamics within complex systems.

Our fourth article is co-authored by Paul McCrone, Noreen Tehrani, Romin Tehrani, Alex Horsley and Ian Hesketh and is entitled “Economic evaluation of a psychological surveillance and support programme in the UK police force”. In this economic evaluation, a simulation model in the form of a decision tree was developed to assess the costs and cost-effectiveness of a psychological surveillance programme for 1,000 UK police personnel based in England and Wales. The model parameters were based on screening data and cost data gathered from five police forces between 2014 and 2023. Each force engaged in an annual psychological surveillance and support programme. The modelled expected total cost incurred to screen 1,000 participants was £84,287 ($106,971). The expected net increase in work productivity for those receiving interventions was valued at £241,672 ($306,713). This result represents a return on investment of 187%. Sensitivity analyses showed that the model was robust to changes in key parameters. The value for money of providing surveillance within the police force to detect mental health problems is highlighted in this study (Mavranezouli et al., 2020), and the findings are relevant to other emergency services.

Our penultimate article is entitled “Fire hazard management in dining properties: a case study” and is co-authored by Mohammad A. Hassanain, Haitham Sawalha, Mohammad B. Hamida, Adel Alshibani and Mohammad Sharif Zami. It explores the relevant fire code requirements and outlines the development of an evaluation tool based on these codes to evaluate fire safety measures in dining properties. The study mainly focused on considering the requirements of widely deployed fire codes in Saudi Arabia, which include the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Code and the International Fire Code (IFC), before developing and mandating the local Saudi Building Code (SBC) in Saudi Arabia. The study examined the extant literature to identify the combustible materials, fire causes and factors making these properties prone to fire incidents. An evaluation method, based on code regulations, for ensuring fire safety in dining properties was then developed and tested on a specific dining facility to validate its practicality. The study analysis resulted in the identification of forty requirements, grouped into seven categories, for ensuring fire safety in dining properties. The case study exposed multiple violations of fire safety, leading to corrective measures for enhancing the fire safety status of the buildings. Given the increasing number of fire incidents in dining properties worldwide, the need to audit the adherence to fire safety codes in these properties has never been greater. This study presents a systematic approach to increase public knowledge of fire events and their effects in dining properties.

In our final article, entitled “Quantifying the relationship between US residential mobility and fire service call volume”, Juliette I. Franqueville, James G. Scott and Ofodike A. Ezekoye explore the dramatic impact of COVID-19 pandemic and fire and emergency medical services (EMS) call volume in the USA due to the “stay-at-home orders” at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (February–May 2020). The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between residential mobility and fire and EMS call volume to help inform resource allocation decisions for the National Fire Operations Reporting System (NFORS) – a platform that enables fire departments to report and visualise operational data users. The analysis was run on 56 fire departments in the USA that subscribe to NFORS. Text comments reported by first responders were also analysed to provide additional context for the types of incidents that drive the model’s results. The analysis revealed that a 1% increase in residential mobility (i.e. time spent at home) was associated with a 1.43% and 0.46% drop in EMS and fire call volume, respectively. Around 89% and 21% of departments had a significant decrease in EMS and fire call volume, respectively, as time spent at home increased. The proposed method provides decision-makers with an effective tool to make informed decisions for resource allocation in case of a future pandemic or public health crisis that has the potential to significantly disrupt human mobility (Prezant et al., 2020).

We are further delighted to report that IJES has retained its “two-star” ranking in the latest Academic Journal Guide 2024 published by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) and continues to be included in the Journal Quality list published by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) as a “C”-rated journal. We owe our gratitude to our authors, reviewers and readers including the wider emergency management community for this recognition in our journey. We are, as always, grateful to our authors who publish in IJES and also other scholars who cite our research.

In 2025, IJES will again be represented at major international conferences by sponsoring/hosting specialist panels/presenting papers on emergency services management by the editors and editorial team. This includes the Annual International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) conference being held in Bologna, Italy, in April 2025 and the British Academy of Management (BAM) conference being organised by the University of Kent, UK, in September 2025.

We again renew our call for publishing with us or joining IJES as potential reviewers and/or on the editorial board including submitting proposals for a special issue (SI) topic(s).

Professor Paresh Wankhade, Editor-In-Chief

Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK

Dated: 18th November 2024