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There is an assumption in emergency planning that the public will “panic” or refuse to comply in the event of mass decontamination. This assumption has serious implications for how the public will be managed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 emergency responders, six of whom had experience of incidents involving decontamination. The authors asked them, first, about their experiences of these events and, second, about their expectations for decontamination involving a large crowd. The aim was to explore the extent to which responders perceived non-compliance and anxiety as (crowd) problems during decontamination, and if so, how they felt that they could be addressed.

Responders with experience of decontamination perceived non-compliance and excessive anxiety to be rare, and suggested that orderly behaviour was more common. However, the majority of emergency responders with no experience of decontamination said they expected panic and non-compliance. They therefore emphasised the importance of “controlling”, rather than communicating with, the public.

The authors argue that “control”-based emergency management strategies can impact negatively on the relationship between the public and responders, and hence hinder effective management of an incident. It would therefore be beneficial to provide training for emergency responders on likely public behaviour during incidents involving decontamination.

This research extends previous research by facilitating a detailed understanding of emergency responders’ experiences and perceptions of managing incidents involving decontamination, and showing how these experiences and perceptions can affect the way in which such incidents are managed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological processes involved in spontaneous co-operation by survivors of mass emergencies, and the possible implications this may have for emergency responders.

A qualitative interview study was conducted with 12 survivors and witnesses of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Data were subjected to thematic analysis.

Spontaneous co-operation amongst survivors often emerged, and this was a function of a common identity that grew out of a sense of shared fate amongst those affected. Some social influence that encouraged co-operation also occurred, and this was dependent upon whether there was a sense of shared identity between source and target of influence.

Evidence was only collected from a sub-set of one incident (7/7), thus limiting possible generalisability of the findings. Further research into comparable situations would provide a better understanding of the processes underlying mutual co-operation and support amongst emergency survivors.

Uninjured bystanders in emergencies can act as “zero-responders”, and so may become a useful resource which can be utilised by the emergency services in mass emergencies.

This is the first paper to explore in detail the social influence processes underlying spontaneous co-operation amongst survivors of emergencies, and will be of use to emergency responders.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze contemporary uses and gratifications (U&G) of the media, focusing on the differences between emergency and ordinary times, and between media consumers in the border region and in the home front during the Israel-Gaza War (2014).

The study used a questionnaire containing 184 items. This significant number of items was necessary due to the large number of media channels and potential uses examined. Due to the length of the questionnaire, and the inclusion of individuals who are not habitual internet users, data were collected in the field rather than through a telephone survey or online. The list of media and uses was compiled based on a review of existing literature regarding functions of media in emergencies.

Television and news websites are dominant suppliers of national and local information, but mobile and social channels lead in terms of social uses, discussions, requests and provision of assistance. The same channels were almost always used during emergencies and ordinary times to satisfy a specific need. The leading channels – television, Facebook, WhatsApp and SMS – were used significantly more on the frontlines than on the home front. The findings demonstrate that people use diverse media, but channels that are live, visual, social and mobile are dominant.

Very few academic studies have compared media uses during ordinary times and emergencies, and those existing focus on the uses of a specific medium. The present study examines various U&G of traditional and new media during the war, compares uses during the war with uses during ordinary times, and compares the population in the border region with the population in the home front.

The purpose of this viewpoint essay is to examine deathcare leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and recommend innovations to employ a more human-centric approach.

This viewpoint essay uses scholarly and popular literature to explore deathcare practices during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to identify limitations of existing mass fatality management policies.

Deathcare leadership in the USA lacks a human-centric approach. Rationalistic mass fatality management during COVID-19 left families struggling with grief and mourning because many burial rituals could not take place. This essay suggests a humanistic approach to death management through leadership innovations as a remedy to this problem. Such leadership innovations can improve responses to deathcare during this ongoing pandemic and future public health emergencies.

This essay offers practical improvements to make deathcare more human-centric.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event.

This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data.

Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as regional police departments, local fire departments, municipal offices, and the personal accounts of city’s police and fire chiefs were the most influential actors during the period under review, and Twitter was leveraged as de facto a 9-1-1 dispatch.

Emergency management agencies should consider adopting a three-phase strategy to improve communication and narrowcast specific types of information corresponding to relevant periods of a crisis episode.

Previous studies on police agencies and social media have largely overlooked discrete periods, or phases, in crisis events. To address this gap, the current study leveraged text and SNA to investigate Twitter communications between HPD and the public. This analysis advances understanding of information flows on law enforcement social media networks during crisis and emergency events.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute an analysis of how crisis communication can make a difference in terms of the impact of an emergency on society.

The attitude of the response organisations with respect to communities is reflected in the planning model they adopt. Two ideal-typical planning models are distinguished in the literature. In order to analyse what role both planning models play in the dynamics of crisis communications, the authors selected two Dutch cases for a comparative case analysis on message contents and media responses to the crisis communication.

The content analysis revealed different crisis communication styles used by the emergency response organisation. The crisis communication in the first case focused primarily on denotative meaning-making while the crisis communication in the second case focused primarily on connotative meaning-making.

The authors argue that, in crisis communication, more attention should be paid to the way in which a response organisation approaches the situation, and to the dynamics of the interaction with the affected community.

More attention should be paid to the fact that emergency response and the affected community mutually shape each other; large-scale operations need to be moved out of their exclusivity and integrated into society.

Crises have a significant societal impact and do not occur in isolation from the broader social environment. The way in which people within society interpret the information from the authorities is important for the emergency response organisation in order that it can adapt to ongoing developments and match its communication more effectively to the affected communities.

This paper aims to develop a crisis readiness framework for road traffic crisis response for law enforcement agencies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A Delphi method was used that combined questionnaire-based survey and the analytical hierarchy process to collect quantitative and qualitative data from an expert panel of crisis readiness professionals on how they prioritise and weigh the different strategic criteria, sub-criteria and performance indicators in the context of law enforcement agencies’ traffic response.

The findings of this paper resulted in the identification, ranking and validation of ten key dimensions of crisis readiness clustered into three distinct sets of priority rankings: response planning, resources, training and coordination; information management and communication and risk and hazard assessment; and early warning, legal and institutional frameworks, recovery initiation and property protection. The results additionally established the relative priority of sub-criteria for each criterion and validated a broad set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for the top six ranked criteria.

The findings are based on a single case study focused on a specific area of operation within crisis response and one group of organisations of the UAE police sector. This potentially places a constraint on the wider generalisation of the findings to different operational areas and agencies, as they may have different priorities or organisational conditions that have implications for the framework application and the relative importance of certain criteria and sub-criteria.

This paper provides strategic guidance in the form of a prioritised list of criteria, sub-criteria and KPIs that can direct efforts to optimise different dimensions of crisis readiness at a strategic and operational level.

This paper makes an original contribution in identifying the key criteria and performance indicators of crisis readiness for road traffic situations. The findings contribute a comprehensive strategic readiness framework that supports planning and decision-making for the development of organisational capacities that can enhance response times of police to road traffic crises. This framework ranks dimensions of crisis readiness and key sub-criteria in order of priority and validates the key components of crisis readiness that can support practitioners to structure, standardise and benchmark key processes and elements of crisis response.

Unintended consequences of knowledge management (KM) can be harmful if they are calamitous. However, they can occasionally be advantageous during catastrophes. The purpose of this study is to investigate how KM can be accidentally propitious during the COVID-19 pandemic using the case of Netflix.

Explanatory factor analysis, multilevel and multiple regressions were used with a sample of 45 countries.

In the authors’ sample, the hypothesized direct relationship between culture (i.e. individualism, power distance and indulgence) and collective pandemic resilience (CPR) was found. In addition, the hypothesized moderating effect of Netflix KM on the relationship between culture and CPR was partially confirmed. The findings suggest that KM during the pandemic can generate an unintended consequence of intensifying the degree of CPR.

Small sample size, data paucity and the constructed variable of CPR might limit the generalizability of this study’s results. Nonetheless, one important research implication is that KM qua unintended consequences can have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between culture and resilience.

This paper highlights how organizations and society can cocreate the value of KM accidentally for the benefit of a larger public during calamities. Also, firms should proactively search for a wider application of their KM beyond their original intention.

This paper initiates a new discussion of positive consequences of unintended KM. Unlike individual-level studies of collective resilience in the past, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study generates country-level implications for the first time.

Decontamination following chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN)/Hazmat incidents is a critical activity carried out in order to mitigate and contain the risk posed by any hazardous materials involved. Human behaviour plays a crucial role in such incidents, as casualties will have little understanding of the situation they find themselves in, leading to uncertainty in what actions to take. This will result in very difficult circumstances within which first responders must operate. However, the importance of human behaviour appears to be a fundamental element being missed in the preparation, training and planning assumptions being made by emergency services and planners in preparation for these events.

This paper looks to understand the scope of this omission by reviewing relevant literature on the subject and engaging with Fire and Rescue Service personnel and managers in the UK. This study utilised semi-structured interviews with 10 Fire and Rescue Service Mass Decontamination Operatives, four Fire and Rescue Service Hazardous Material Advisers and three Fire and Rescue Service Strategic Officers participating. These interviews were then analysed using a thematic framework to identified key themes from the research which were then validated using two independent researchers to provide an inter-rater reliability measure. Finally, a follow-up validation questionnaire was also developed to test the validity of the themes identified and this was completed by another with 36 Fire and Rescue Service Mass Decontamination Operatives.

Both the literature review and interviews undertaken with emergency responders and mangers demonstrated the crucial importance of accounting for behavioural aspects in these situations especially in regards to the likely levels of compliance to be expected by responders and the potential problem of casualties not remaining at the scene of an incident to undergo decontamination.

This research identifies a number of key themes so far not recognized through any other research and in doing so offers insights into potential flaws in the UK Fire and Rescue Service response planning for CBRN/Hazmat incidents requiring mass decontamination. It is intended that this research will inform further study into the areas identified in order to ensure gaps in planning, training and strategies for mass decontamination operations can be more fully informed and if required allow for a more effective response.

When designing an optimization model for use in a mass casualty event response, it is common to encounter the heavy and considerable demand of injured patients and inadequate resources and personnel to provide patients with care. The purpose of this study is to create a model that is more practical in the real world. So the concept of “predicting the resource and personnel shortages” has been used in this research. Their model helps to predict the resource and personnel shortages during a mass casualty event. In this paper, to deal with the shortages, some temporary emergency operation centers near the hospitals have been created, and extra patients have been allocated to the operation center nearest to the hospitals with the purpose of improving the performance of the hospitals, reducing congestion in the hospitals and considering the welfare of the applicants.

The authors research will focus on where to locate health-care facilities and how to allocate the patients to multiple hospitals to take into view that in some cases of emergency situations, the patients may exceed the resource and personnel capacity of hospitals to provide conventional standards of care.

In view of the fact that the problem is high degree of complexity, two multi-objective meta-heuristic algorithms, including non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and non-dominated ranking genetic algorithm (NRGA), were proposed to solve the model where their performances were compared in terms of four multi-objective metrics including maximum spread index (MSI), spacing (S), number of Pareto solution (NPS) and CPU run-time values. For comparison purpose, paired t-test was used. The results of 15 numerical examples showed that there is no significant difference based on MSI, S and NPS metrics, and NRGA significantly works better than NSGA-II in terms of CPU time, and the technique for the order of preference by similarity to ideal solution results showed that NRGA is a better procedure than NSGA-II.

The planning horizon and time variable have not been considered in the model, for example, the length of patients’ hospitalization at hospitals.

Presenting an effective strategy to respond to a mass casualty event (natural and man-made) is the main goal of the authors’ research.

This paper strategy is used in all of the health-care centers, such as hospitals, clinics and emergency centers when dealing with disasters and encountering with the heavy and considerable demands of injured patients and inadequate resources and personnel to provide patients with care.

This paper attempts to shed light onto the formulation and the solution of a three-objective optimization model. The first part of the objective function attempts to maximize the covered population of injured patients, the second objective minimizes the distance between hospitals and temporary emergency operation centers and the third objective minimizes the distance between the warehouses and temporary centers.