Situational assessment

The situational assessment is the element where the operational leader is making an image of the scene of the incident, including an estimate of the severity of the situation. The situational assessment is a process that starts as soon as the Officer of Duty gets the call to respond to an incident or crisis. For example, an Officer of Duty gets the call for an apartment fire at certain address. That is the starting point for the situational assessment. Based on that point the Officer of Duty will start to gather information.

36 As one could read in the previous chapter, using information technology does mediate the actions and perception of the Officer of Duty. One of the changes in action is that Officers of Duty take time in the pre-phase of the incident, meaning that the Officer of Duty already needs to make an image as complete as possible before he or she has even seen the actual scene of the incident. When the Officer arrives at the scene ideally, he or she would mostly be verifying the own image of the situation and filling in remaining blind spots.As one can see in appendix 3 there are currently various applications and systems in place that provide information necessary for situational assessment. Applications such as CityGIS, Notebook, Google Maps, Streetview or the Digital Accessibility Maps.

Based on the interviews it became clear that the use of information technologies was mainly seen as advantageous for the situational assessment. According to the Officers of Duty information technologies helped them to gain a faster and more complete situational assessment, especially in the preliminary stages of the incident response. Some Officers of Duty explained that if they take a moment to check the available information for an incident before they drive to the scene, they can fill their situational image for about 60% to 70%. Then when they drive to the incident more information can come from the unit leaders and the emergency central, so when they arrive between 80% and 90% of their situational assessment is completed. Then they only need to fill the last remaining 10% by adding the information they can only get at the scene and by verifying the 90% they already had in their minds. So overall the Officers of Duty, that take a moment to check the information beforehand, feel they arrive at the scene better prepared and with a more complete overview of the situation allowing them to act quicker and more focussed. Having a faster and more complete situational assessment in the preliminary stages of incident response creates various advantages for the Officers of Duty. Some of the Officers of Duty stated that by using information technology in the preliminary stages of an incident, they get a faster and more complete image of the situation. This allows them to arrive at the scene better prepared, they can verify assumptions faster and check blind spots quicker. The advantage of arriving better prepared is that they can act more focussed and more effective. This advantage is especially created due to the use of geographical images or satellite images. An Officer of Duty for example said, “Before we did that with a simple drawing, but now we can use satellite or geographical overviews that is much easier and saves time as well”. Another Officer of Duty complemented this statement by saying that “A geographical overview in particular is very helpful as an image often says more than a thousand words”.

37 Other Officers of Duty felt that arriving at the scene with a more complete situational image helped them to better coordinate the different fire fighter units and create a more aligned cooperation between the units or other emergency disciplines. Because not just the Officer of Duty can view the available information, also the unit leaders of the fire fighter units have the same information. Or in the case of multiple emergency services, the Officer of Duty can show for example an overview on his tablet to make sure everyone is working on the same, shared image. One Officer of Duty feels that “the completer image and the overview help me, especially in incidents with multiple partners, to get everyone on the same image. Because the tablets or information technology can show the area, the surrounding and the information. That can help to get all the involved partners on the same page when talking about the situational assessment”.

Another advantage that some Officers of Duty felt is that being able to view more situational information it the earlier stages allowed them to work safer or plan a safer tactic, because they can view possible risks and dangers in earlier stages of the incident. This was much different compared to 10 years ago, because we have the overall image much faster. An Officer of Duty said: “we can work safer I believe because we now the risks and dangers better beforehand”. The way of making a situational assessment has not changed due to the use of information technology. However, using information technology, especially in the early stage of an incident has improved the situational assessment by making it faster and more complete. The faster and more complete situational assessment allows for different advantages as

presented above. The frequency of use of information technology is not of importance for this factor nor is it just advantageous in the pre-phase of the incident. Using information

technology in some stage of the incident does influence the situational assessment in a positive way.