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Decision Making During Disasters and Emergenciesand EmergenciesRobert C. Chandler, Ph.D.

Director, Nicholson School of Communication

• The Global Leader in emergency and incident notification systems

• Fast-growing global company with more than 1,500 clients operating in more than 100 countries

• Serve the Global 2000 enterprise, corporations, healthcare systems, state and local governments, federal

About Everbridge

and local governments, federal government, military, financial services firms, and universities

• 100% focused on incident notification solutions that merge technology and expertise

3

Agenda

Part 1: Presentation

• Behavioral & psychometric issues that occur during

emergencies

• The critical challenges to decision making during

disasters and other emergencies

• How to anticipate and mitigate barriers to making • How to anticipate and mitigate barriers to making

quality decisions

Part 2: Q&A

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5

Bracing for the 2010 Hurricane Season

Decision Making During

Disasters and Emergencies:

Research Findings and

Applications to Enhance

Performance

Dr. Robert ChandlerUniversity of Central Florida

Performance

Human Factor Errors and Disasters

• Human factor errors including diminished cognitive performance and

poor decision making in critical situations – (FAA Study)

• 66% of air carrier accidents

• 79% fatal commuter accidents

• 88% fatal general aviation accidents

• Human factors errors can be costly in surgical operating rooms,

emergency response, EOC/Command Centers, disaster

management teams, military/law enforcement, and other crisis

contexts

Diminished Cognitive Capacities

During emergencies and

disasters, decisions must

typically be made

unexpectedly with little

advance notice, high advance notice, high

stress/distress context,

little time for thorough

deliberation, and often

with high (life and death)

negative consequence

risks

Basic Facts About Crisis Stress

• Effects of stress are cumulative

• Effects of stress are interactive

• Uncertainty amplifies stress effects

• New experiences/Situations amplifies stress effects

• Tasks and Deciding may be stressful

• Stress affects different people differently• Stress affects different people differently

• Individuals have different levels of “stress hardiness” or stress affect

resilience

• Stress symptoms manifest both behaviorally and cognitively

• Hyper-stress consists of CCS , SRT, Concentration, INE, DLR, SDM,

ITP, Time Stress

CCS – Cognitive Capacity Sufficiency

Although the human brain has tremendous potential cognitive capacity - Psychometric researchers assume that each individual has baseline use and peak use cognitive capacities and that there is a sufficiency threshold for effective decision making

Complex Critical Events Complex Critical Events

can tax (over-tax) these

capacities

CCS – Cognitive Capacity Sufficiency

Research on decision making in complex systems provides insight into the factors that negatively impact successful cognitive performance and decision making

• Maximum Adaptability Model

• Compensatory Control Model

Decision Making in Critical Contexts

When there is little time, little information,

substantial time constraints, and with high

negative consequences for the

decisions – these ‘external’

factors affect (impact) the

‘internal’ mental processes

of decision making

SRT – Simple Reaction Time

• Tendency for cognitive delay (freeze)

• Increases in time required for decisions, response, behavior

performance

• SRT linear correlation with Hyper-stress• SRT linear correlation with Hyper-stress

• SRT has most dramatic impact on more complex tasks

Concentration (Mental Effort)

• Hyper-stress negatively impacts one’s

ability to concentrate on the decision or task

• Both cognitive processing and cognitive

control are impacted by hyper-stress

• Affective (emotional) processes can also diminish ability for

sustained attention to a task or decision (wandering minds)

• Personally high salience and valence emotional considerations

decrease the ability to concentrate on the task or decision

INE – Intense Negative Emotions

• Distracting

• Reduces Focus

• Changes processing pathways

• Disrupts goal-oriented behavior• Disrupts goal-oriented behavior

• Less optimal for task completion

• Psychosomatic symptoms arise

• Disrupt sleep and sleep cycle

• TSD

• PTSD

DLR – Diminished Logical Reasoning

• Information manipulation tasks or Logical Reasoning tasks are

diminished by hyper-stress

• Delayed processing (increases in time and effort) affect the quality of

cognitive processes

• These diminished processes appear to most effect cognitive

performance in situations which require rapid decisions or when the

individual attempts to achieve their “low stress” (typical) response

times (increases in frustration and more stress)

SMD – Stress Diminished Memory

• Stress Diminished Memory and

Information Recall

• Hyper-stress Diminished Memory and • Hyper-stress Diminished Memory and

Information Recall Ability Effects

ITP – Implicit Temporal Processing

Compressed time frames for decisions independently impact the quality

of decisions and our perception of time itself

• Perceptions of “time” affect our abilities for pattern

recognition, time-dependent decision-making,

awareness of synchronized processes, andawareness of synchronized processes, and

decision priorities

• Hyper-stress negatively impacts our ITP and

diminished ITP negatively impacts our ability for making

decisions

• Significant negative affect on “multi-tasking”

performance

Time Stress

Time Stress independently negatively impacts decision quality and

cognitive performance

• Requiring tasks and decisions to be

completed with short and finite time

windows (with penalties or negative windows (with penalties or negative

consequences for failing to meet the

fixed critical deadline).

• The inverse speed-accuracy tradeoff

• Diminished measures of “mental

workload capacity” correlated with

Time Stress

Passing the Stress Test

• Formal training in handling stress increases resiliency (constructive

ways of coping with hyper stress can be learned – and dysfunctional

ways of coping can be avoided)

• Learning strategies for side-stepping hyper-stress environments

typically provide better benefits and more bottom line results than typically provide better benefits and more bottom line results than

stress coping skills alone

• Hyper-Stress management training provides

an additional benefit – better routine stress

management skills in daily life

Training the Managing Hyper-Stress

Although we insist on extensive training for various technical and

professional skills and abilities – learning to manage the impact of

hyper-stress is usually left entirely to chance

Strategies for Stress

• Recognize and avoid hyper-stress contributing factors

• Include stress factors in training exercises and simulations

• Prepare protocols and procedures in advance – and follow them

during hyper-stress environments

• Immunize yourself • Immunize yourself

to the effects of

hyper-stress

• Stick to the plan

• Maintain control

Train the Brain

• Research confirms that under conditions of hyper-stress, the human

brain tends to favor rigid “habit” memory over more flexible (and

requiring more mental effort) “cognitive” memory (hyper-stress results

in more acting than thinking)

• One can train their brain to react from • One can train their brain to react from

habitual memory to perform and complete

complex tasks quickly and accurately

during hyper-stress contexts

• The value of repeated training is

confirmed by the research studies

Effective Decision Making In These Conditions

• In real world crisis and emergency contexts, at peak periods of hyper-

stress; decision makers are not usually capable (less or more so depending

on the individual) of framing tasks in logical ways - taking into account all of

the available information and situational variables and establish comparable

(logical) alternatives to evaluate and from which to ‘chose’ a decision.

• Rather, they more typically assess of the dynamics of a situation which they • Rather, they more typically assess of the dynamics of a situation which they

recognize from previous experience and using their past experience and

any crisis decision training – act (“decide”) by imagining event trajectories of

a given decision/action (results and implications) contextualized (compared

with) how they believe a situation is likely to evolve.

• Effective decision makers tend to rely more on their “problem solving”

tendencies based on past experiences to blend a “solution” – since the

logical and rational processes of traditional cognitive decision making are

frequently disrupted.

Five Quick Recommendations

1. Select the right people (assess, screen and test for KSAs for

cognitive processing and decision making under hyper-stress

conditions.

2. Provide extensive training and preparation for problem solving in

hyper-stress contexts.

3. Teach the “right stuff.” Include specific training for stress 3. Teach the “right stuff.” Include specific training for stress

management, coping skills, teach methods to stay calm so as to act

with poise and capability to make decisions in stressful conditions.

4. Ensure realistic training to help create level of “stress inoculation” –

this is a major short-coming in most training, mocks, drills, and

exercises.

5. Minimize traumatic hyper-stress exposure and conditions as much

as possible – “de-stress” the environment, processes, and context

as much as feasible.

Incident Notification Incident Notification

Candace GreenCandace GreenCandace GreenCandace GreenSenior Online Marketing Manager, Senior Online Marketing Manager, EverbridgeEverbridge

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Incident Notification Solutions Address Common Communication Challenges

• Communicate quickly, easily, and efficiently with large numbers of

people in minutes, not hours, making

sure that the lines of communication

are open

• Reduce miscommunications and control rumors with accurate,

consistent messages

• Satisfy regulatory requirements• Receive feedback from your

messages by using polling

capabilities

• Ensure two-way communications

to get feedback from message

receivers

• Satisfy regulatory requirementswith extensive and complete

reporting of communication attempts

and two-way acknowledgements

from recipients

• Deliver refined, prepared , timedmessages to each pre-designated

audience group, by scenario

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Key Evaluation Criteria for an Incident

Notification System

• Experience and expertise

• Ease of use

• Ability to reach all contact paths, including voice,

email, native SMS (over SMPP and SMTP), IM, and

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email, native SMS (over SMPP and SMTP), IM, and

more

• Ease of integration

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Q&A Note: slides are currently available to everyone on blog.everbridge.com

Use the Q&A

function to

submit your

questions.

29

Contact information

Robert C. Chandler, Ph.D.rcchandl@mail.ucf.edu

1.407.823.2683

Marc Ladinmarc.ladin@everbridge.com

Communication resources

Upcoming webinars:

9/11 – Looking back on what has changed in

the last 10 years (September)

White papers, literature, case studies

www.everbridge.com/resources

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