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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many facets of urban life and operations, including emergency incidents. This study examines how COVID-19 has brought about changes in, and shifting patterns of, emergency incidents in the City of Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. This study aims to derive insights that could potentially inform planning and decision-making of fire and rescue service operations as further stages of the pandemic unfold.

Standard temporal analysis methods are applied to investigate the changes in the number and nature of emergency incidents, as recorded sequentially in the city's fire and rescue service incident report database, through various phases or waves of the pandemic and the associated public health measures that have been introduced.

The study analyses show a decrease in the number of emergency calls compared to previous reference years. Vehicle-related incidents show the highest decline, and changes in daily and hourly pattens are consistent with public health measures in place during each stage of the pandemic. The study concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on demand for emergency services provided by the fire department.

The authors believe this is the first study applying temporal analysis on a city's emergency incident response data spanning various phases/waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis may be replicated for other municipal fire services, which can generate further insights that may apply to specific local conditions and states of the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to expand understandings of interorganizational collaboration among high reliability organizations (HROs). It proposes that HROs face unique needs for relationship building, pre-planning, and retrospective sensemaking that do not fit within prior models of collaboration. For HROs, definitions of collaboration vary contextually based on needs that arise during emergency situations. HROs have a need for both hierarchical structure and collaborative processes and use collaboration as a sensemaking frame that allows practitioners to attend to both needs.

The paper uses a case study from an ongoing ethnographic study of an emergency response collaboration. The paper uses open-ended interviews about collaboration with all key members of the incident response hierarchy, and participant observation of collaboration before, during and after a key emergency incident.

The paper proposes a new framework for HRO collaboration: that collaboration is a sensemaking frame for HROs used to make sense of individual actions, that HRO collaboration is more complex during pre-planning and focused on individual decision making during incidents, and that members can communicatively make sense of the need for hierarchy and collaborative action by defining these needs contextually.

The paper uses an in-depth case study of an incident to explore this collaborative framework; therefore, researchers are encouraged to test this framework in additional high reliability collaborative contexts.

The paper includes implications for best communicative practices to recognize the need to be both hierarchical and flexible in high reliability organizing.

This paper fulfills a need to expand collaboration literature beyond idealized and egalitarian definitions, in order to understand how practitioners use communication to understand their actions as collaborative, especially in organizations that also require hierarchy and individual actions. This case study suggests that collaboration as a sensemaking frame creates collaborative advantages for HROs, but can also limit sensemaking about incident management.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual model for future theory building and provides guidance to emergency managers by identifying important organizational factors influencing emergency response performance.

A conceptual framework is developed linking organizational characteristics and incident types to emergency response performance, focusing on the “prepare” and “respond” stages in emergency management. Archival data are used to test the framework, using ANOVA to analyze 12,057 incidents over a nine-year period.

The results indicate that organizational characteristics impact emergency response performance through Knowledge of Location. Several organizational factors impact Knowledge of Location, which then serves, with incident type, as a significant indicator for emergency response performance.

Researchers are constrained by the data collected in the database used for the study; however, the use of this commonly collected data to operationalize our variables for model testing facilitates analysis of other emergency management organizations for validation. Future model extension is possible by identifying other important variables.

The analysis emphasizes the importance of area familiarization training in improving emergency response as well as the impact of organizational structure changes on response. Emergency managers should ensure clear lines of authority and communication during times of change.

This is one of the few studies to use empirical data from a large-scale, real-world database to study emergency response performance. In contrast to previous modeling-based research, this study emphasizes organizational characteristics with an empirical perspective.

Particularly since the 11 September terrorist attacks in the USA, much attention has been given to the development and implementation of incident management systems (IMS). The IMS is a tool for marshalling pre‐identified and pre‐assembled resources to respond to an emergency or disaster. IMS is particularly useful when personnel and resources from many agencies and jurisdictions are required to manage large incidents successfully. While many IMS have been devised over the years, their use remains intermittent. This paper traces the evolution of IMS, reviews how it can be integrated into jurisdictional emergency and disaster management, and specifies the structures that are used in most incident management systems at the municipal level.

Responding to emergency incidents by emergency response organizations such as fire, ambulance and police during large disaster and emergency events is very important. The purpose of this paper is to provide some insights into response patterns during the 2013 ice storm in the city of Vaughan, Ontario, Canada, using temporal and spatial analyses.

The City of Vaughan Fire and Rescue Service data set containing all responses to fire and other emergency incidents from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2016 was used. The 2013 Southern Ontario ice storm occurred from December 20, 2013 to January 1, 2014, and, for this study, December 20–31 is considered the “study period.” Temporal, spatial and spatiotemporal analyses of responses during the study period are carried out and are compared with the same period in other years (2009–2012 and 2014–2016).

The findings show that temporal patterns of response attributes changed significantly during the 2013 ice storm. Similarly, the spatial pattern of responses during the 2013 ice storm showed some major differences with other years. The spatiotemporal analyses also demonstrate significant variations in responses in the city during different hours of the day in the ice storm days.

This study is the first study to examine the spatiotemporal patterns of responses made by a fire department during the 2013 ice storm in Canada. It provides some insights into the differences between response volumes, temporal and spatial distributions during large emergency events (e.g. ice storm) and normal situations. The results will help in mitigating the number of responses in the future through public education and technological changes. Moreover, the results will provide fire departments with information that could help them prepare for such events by possible reallocation of resources.

This paper aims to investigate the different patterns of organizational behavioural responses to major incidents and develop an original classification of these patterns.

An extensive literature review was made to investigate the different patterns of behavioural responses to major incidents and then to develop an original classification of these patterns. Several sources of information, such as case studies, technical reports, academic journal articles and organizational internal reports were used.

Organizations respond differently to major incidents. This was clear from the different behavioural patterns investigated and identified. Behavioural patterns determine levels of resilience and ability of organizations to overcome and ultimately survive major incidents.

To promote effective and organized behavioural response patterns to major incidents and improve consistency of responses across the organization, relevant authorities should demonstrate to all private and public enterprises the significance of effective behavioural responses, thus enabling them to better respond to various potential emergencies.

A number of models of human behaviour have been introduced in the literature to understand how people respond to emergency situations. They each take a different perspective on human behaviour but no single theory has emerged as the leading paradigm. This highlights the complexity of understanding human behaviour in such situations and the need for a better classification of behavioural patterns. To the author’s knowledge, this is one of very few studies to investigate, identify and categorize behavioural response patterns to major incidents. This research is expected to be of a substantial value for those interested in improving organizational behaviour during major incidents, as well as those interested in improving organizational resilience.

Describes the emergency management structure created for the International Air Tattoo ’94 at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Describes the table‐top discussion and live exercise which preceded the event, to ensure that adequate procedures were in place should a major incident occur. Discusses lessons learned from the live exercise.

Major incidents in road tunnels remain a collaborative challenge for the emergency services (fire and rescue service, police and ambulance), emergency dispatch centres (EDCs) and infrastructure owners. The aim of this paper is to investigate how collaborative partners to the ambulance services perceive the rescue effort and to identify factors that may influence its efficiency.

Focus group and individual interviews were conducted with 19 participants who were infrastructure owners or had operational or tactical responsibilities with the emergency services or EDCs in two regions in Sweden with multiple road tunnels. The collected data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Three main categories described efficiency factors during and after an incident: (1) coordinating the initial information (using a shared terminology), (2) achieving situational awareness (identifying those persons in need) and (3) lessons (not) learnt (lack of joint tactical plans and exercises). The emerging theme was access, assess and evaluate.

The findings suggest that establishing national policies and collaborative forums might yield more efficiently managed rescue efforts in road tunnel incidents in Sweden and other countries with similar organisational structures.

This study offers new insights on interoperability during responses to complex underground incidents.

Bill Freudenburg’s concept of recreancy is used as a frame for explaining processes that perpetuate questionable regimes of emergency response planning. The specific instance of tar sands upgrading in Alberta, Canada, is used as a case in point. When recreancy is institutionalized so that the results correlate across permitted hazardous facilities, it must be concluded that recreancy is less of a situational response than a normative dynamic.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to realize a complete analysis at scenario deduction of unconventional incidents coupling based on the GERTS network method.

Starting from the manifestation of coupling objects, three types of emergency coupling are analyzed according to different rules, which are “events‐events” coupling, “event‐factors” coupling and “factors‐factors” coupling. Then the coupling mechanism for emergency is focused on analyzing, and the concepts of three types of coupling are put forward, at the same time, three quantitative models for coupling mechanisms are present. Also, a case was discussed to verify the analysis of coupling mechanism of emergency.

According to the types of factors rules, the classes of coupling of emergency have been divided into three types. The coupling mechanism of emergency can be used to describe the novel coupling models.

This research provides the method for coupling analysis in the scenario of unconventional incidents and guides the emergency managers to develop contingency strategies.

The paper succeeds in constructing a novel coupling model for emergency, and it could provide an effective tool for a quantitative study on unconventional incidents coupling.