Improving the Human

Performance in Managing
Emergency Situations
Introduction
Accidents can be prevented by having a holistic approach at tackling
safety by reducing overall hazards in a facility. However, even the best
accident prevention measures has loopholes that allow for black swan
event- defined by the safety industry as unexpected, rarely occurring
incidents such as the vapour cloud explosion in Bruncefield. By
experience, VCE will not occur on the site hence the engineers design the
facility without features to prevent VCE. On 11 December 2005, multiple
factors including human factor are said to cause the incident which
resulted in 8 casualties and loss of properties. When prevention fails,
mitigation is the last standing wall that prohibits from an accident into a
disaster, and this calls for emergency management.
Emergency situation arises when the incident involves a time pressure
constraint put onto the personnel dealing with such situations. Each
second wasted may increase the magnitude of the incident exponentially.
Hence, it is crucial for the personnel who manage the situation are
capable of withstanding the time stress constraint. Furthermore, the
communication among the organisation that manages the emergency is
also important as of the individuals who manage it. Finally, the humanmachine interface design must be ergonomic enough to assist those who
deals with emergency controls are able to perform in their job optimally.
This article shall discus these three key areas that allow the human
performance of managing an emergency disaster to improve.

The managing personnel

Humans are beings that by nature to fail and err, however the rate of
human failure can be lowered given that we provide a conducive
environment for him/her to perform especially in emergency situation
where work stressors pushed the boundaries of human performance to the
limit
Key characteristics of an emergency coordinator according to Flin (1999):

1. Fit physically, mentally, and psychologically. Any individuals who are

less than fully fit such as minor cold or flu will not able to coordinate
emergency situations as it impairs ones cognitive ability to reach a
crucial decision.
2. Know ones strength and limitations. This characteristic
complements the first one as it sets the boundary of where one
must step down and let others who are more currently competent to
complete the task. Personal ego would be the counter characteristic
where one is not always readily to admit of their unfitness, which
leads to endangering others as a result of the coordinators
incompetent decision.
3. Excellent leadership qualities are qualities where one is able to
convey his ideas and instructions effectively to his team members.
4. Tolerance on ambiguity are skill needed to achieve a decision
without complete knowledge. This skill is very important as
emergency situations often have time factor that must be taken into
consideration where very detail knowledge on such situation may
not exist. So decision must be made primarily out of past experience
and readily available knowledge. Therefore, it is important to
conduct emergency exercises such as evacuation drills so that the
coordination of the situation can be improved from time to time

Team Organisation
Managing an emergency situation requires several people due to the
limitation of a single personnel such as limitation of knowledge,
experience, or fitness. Having multiple personnel that manages an
emergency adds a redundancy protection form the human error loophole.
Working in groups would be less likely to have a human failure, given that:
1. The personnel originates from various background of knowledge. A
wider knowledge base would further narrow down the knownunknowns as in Rumsfield (2010). For example, in a emergency
management team of a chemical plant, there shall be at least a
personnel from the processing department, electrical department,
top management, and technicians.
2. A small team size will enhance the efficiency of the organisation in
achieving a fast decision ideally a 3-7 person but this is entirely
dependent on the size of the disaster.
3. A clear chain of command and reduced layers of bureaucracy for
faster chain of command travel. In an emergency situation, the gap
for error is very limited and time stressors are prevalent. Clear chain
of command reduces the opportunity of a miscommunication and
less bureaucracy will quicken the execution.

In a situation where an emergency turned into a catastrophe or a crisis, a

multi-agency organisation is needed such as from the local council, the
local fire brigade, the police, hospital, or even the army are all involved in
a crisis management. Of course, when coordinating a multi-agency
organisation, leadership skills of the coordinator is important as well as
the cooperation between agencies. What better ways to ensure good
cooperation in emergency situation other than emergency exercises that
involved the said agency?
One good example of such initiative is the Pasir Gudang Emergency
Mutual Aid (PAGEMA) which was established in 1998 and chaired by Johore
Port Berhad. Pasir Gudang, Johor is well known for its heavy industrial area
which involves dealing with hazardous materials and heavy machinery.
The severity of an incident may harm the whole Pasir Gudang area and
may be due to chemical hazards, fire hazards, radiation hazards, or
natural disaster. Therefore, the aim of PAGEMA is to bring together
government agencies and high risk industries for contributing effort in
managing an emergency at Pasir Gudang Industrial Area and they have
been conducting multi agency crisis management exercise on a yearly
basis.

Design interface
Modern plants nowadays are equipped with automation systems and there
is an option to fully select into manual mode where human intervention is
needed. This is usually done during emergencies since humans are better
in adaptive cognitive abilty. Automation in processing plant is a good
move in economics as less operator is needed, however the drawbacks of
automation is that humans tend to be too dependent on automation and
have their cognitive ability reduced from time to time. When human
intervention is needed, the operator is not able to perform optimally.
Secondly, regarding equipment that deals with emergency situation such
as emergency buttons and escape doors are designed with the ergonomic
in mind. The ergonomics of these designs must consider the natural
movement of humans so that less time are being used on how to operate
the equipment and more time can be utilised in dealing with the
emergency. For example, the act of pushing a button rather than twisting
or pulling is applied into the design of emergency buttons. Pushing a fire
escape door lever also incorporate the same principle as the act of
pushing is more natural to the human body rather than twisting or pulling.

Conclusion
With these three factors in mind, the managing personnel, the team
organisation, and the design interface would greatly improve on human
performance in intervening with emergency situations.

References
Pasir Gudan Emergency Mutual Aid (PAGEMA). (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.pagema.com.my/Default.php
Paton, D., & Flin, R. (1999). Disaster Stress: an Emergency Management
Perspective. Disaster Prevention and Management, 8(4), 261-267.
Ponsa, P., Vilanova, R., & Amante, B. (2011). Human Interventino and Interface
Design in Automation Systems. International Journal of Computers,
Communications, & Control, 6(1), 166-174.
Rumsfeld, D. (2010). Known and Unknown: Author's Note. Rumsfeld Papers, pp.
13-16.