Citation
(2014), "2013 Awards for Excellence", International Journal of Emergency Services, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJES-03-2014-005
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2013 Awards for Excellence
Article Type: 2013 Awards for Excellence From: International Journal of Emergency Services, Volume 3, Issue 1
The following article was selected for this year's Outstanding Paper Award for International Journal of Emergency Services
"Fire alarm or false alarm?!: situation awareness and decision-making "bias" of firefighters in training exercises"
Di Catherwood, Graham K. Edgar, Geoff Sallis, Andrew Medley and David Brookes
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess whether firefighters display different decision-making biases: either a liberal
bias to accepting information as true or a conservative bias to rejecting information, with the former carrying risk of “false
alarm” errors and the latter of “misses”.
Design/methodology/approach – Situation awareness (SA) and decision-making biases were examined in Fire and Rescue (FRS) “table-top” and Breathing Apparatus (BA) training exercises. The former involved showing 50 operational FRS personnel a powerpoint presentation representing the
drive-to, views and information related to the incident. The BA study involved 16 operational FRS personnel entering a smoke-filled training building in a search-and-rescue exercise. True/false answers to statements about the incidents were analysed by a signal-detection-type tool (QASA) to give measures of SA and bias.
Findings – In both studies, there were two groups showing different bias patterns (either conservative with risk of “miss” errors, or liberal with risk of “false alarms”) (p=0.001), but not different SA (p>0.05).
Research limitations/implications – Future work will involve more realistic training exercises and explore the consistency of individual bias tendencies over different contexts.
Practical implications – Risk in fireground decision making may be minimised by increasing awareness of individual tendencies to either conservative or liberal bias patterns and the associated risk of respectively making “miss” or “false alarm” errors.
Social implications – The results may help to minimise fireground risk.
Originality/value – This is the first evidence to show firefighter decision bias in two different exercises.
This article originally appeared in Volume 1 Number 2, 2012, International Journal of Emergency Services
The following article was selected for this year's Highly Commended Award
"From police authorities to police and crime commissioners: might policing become more publicly accountable?"
John W. Raine and Paul Keasey
This article originally appeared in Volume 1 Number 2, 2012, International Journal of Emergency Services