Title: Design and evaluation of a role improvisation exercise for crisis and disaster response teams

Authors: Jiri Trnka; Jonas Lundberg; Erland Jungert

Addresses: Swedish Defence Research Agency, SE 164 90 Stockholm, Sweden ' Department of Science and Technology, Linköpings Universitet, SE 601 74 Norrköping, Sweden ' Swedish Defence Research Agency, SE 164 90 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: This paper reports a case study, which aimed to investigate what role improvisation plays in crisis and disaster response teams and how improvisation performance of such teams can be simulated in representative contexts and constraints. The case study is based on a single case, the Swedish Response Team, an international crisis and disaster response team. The presented work identifies what kind of improvisation occurred in two real response operations conducted by this team. It also presents design and evaluation of a simulation exercise, which set a stage for improvisation under constraints and contexts identified in the studied response operations. The study demonstrates how to create situations that demand improvisation similar to those in crisis and disaster response operations. The outcomes of the simulation exercise corresponded to the kind of improvisation that occurred during the studied operations, suggesting that the proposed exercise design is feasible for creating situations that demand improvisation similar to those in crisis and disaster response operations. The experience from this study highlights important areas for design of such exercises: design variables, information-injects, assessment of participants' improvisation, and representative contexts and constraints.

Keywords: crisis response; disaster response; emergency response; international operations; response work; roles; scenarios; simulation; role improvisation exercise; response teams; emergency management; crisis management; disaster management; case study; Sweden.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2016.077348

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2016 Vol.15 No.3, pp.251 - 271

Accepted: 03 Dec 2014
Published online: 29 Jun 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article