Dosed access to the common operational picture
Corresponding Author:
Willem Treurniet
Institute for Safety Netherlands
willem.treurniet@ifv.nl
Author(s):
Vincent Suitela1
1Institute For Safety, Vincent.Suitela@Ifv.Nl, NLD
We view modern communities as webs of interdependent institutions, social networks, physical entities and critical infrastructures. A crisis boils down to a failure that ripples through the fabric of the community and threatens or impacts vital community interests. Given their wicked nature (Head, 2008), crises can best be responded to by a networked organisational collective (Kapucu, Arslan, & Collins, 2010) in which all relevant expertise is involved.
A common operational picture (COP) is generally seen as a valuable contribution to a networked response (Treurniet & Wolbers, 2021). The organisations in the network maintain and share their own picture of the crisis as part of the COP, and in so doing they continually and iteratively frame, elaborate, question and reframe the situation (Klein, Wiggins, & Dominguez, 2010).
The word ‘common’ in COP suggests that all information in it should be shared with all organisations that might need to be involved in the response (Treurniet, Boersma, & Groenewegen, 2019). We propose an information sharing strategy that strikes a balance between unlimited sharing of all information available and letting each individual organisation decide on what information to share with whom. The access to information is organised in a cascaded way. The location, nature and extent of the crisis is pro-actively shared with all organisations for which it might be relevant, in order to let each organisation assess whether or not the crisis affects its area of responsibility. The information valve can be opened and closed in a number of predefined levels as needed. In so doing, each organisation has a substantial role in deciding on the nature and extent of its role in the response to the crisis, while the shaping of the crisis response network is still done in a controlled way.
Head, B. W. (2008). Wicked problems in public policy. Public policy, 3(2), 101-118.
Herranz, J. (2008). The multisectoral trilemma of network management. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(1), 1-31.
Kapucu, N., Arslan, T., & Collins, M. L. (2010). Examining Intergovernmental and Interorganizational Response to Catastrophic Disasters: Toward a Network-Centered Approach. Administration & Society, 42(2), 222-247.
Klein, G. A., Wiggins, S., & Dominguez, C. O. (2010). Team sensemaking. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 11(4), 304-320.
Treurniet, W., Boersma, F. K., & Groenewegen, P. (2019). Configuring emergency response networks. International journal of emergency management, 15(4), 316-332.
Treurniet, W., & Wolbers, J. J. (2021). Codifying a crisis: Progressing from information sharing to distributed decisionmaking. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 29(1), 23-35.
Weick, K. E. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Exploring Future Work Practices for Information Sharing and Achieving Common Situational Understanding in Disasters