Reflections on work as done (WAD) and work as imagined (WAI) in an emergency response organization: A study on firefighters training exercises

Emergency response organizations need to be resilient to cope with escalating events resulting from dynamic, unexpected, or complex situations. In Brazil, the Firefighter Corps are military hierarchal organizations with a culture based on fixed structures, well defined norms and procedures. These push against innovations which are necessary to be resilient. This research describes how firefighter captains in the 30-35-year age range managed an emergency response escalation in light of standard operating procedures (SOPs) during a training exercise. The study used ethnographic methods to find and discuss gaps between the instructions and the activities carried out during the exercise, highlighting the differences between work as done (WAD) and work as imagined (WAI), as it was instantiated in the SOP prescriptions. The aim was to produce reflections on WAI and WAD as a way to raise awareness of the need for a cultural change toward resilience in firefighter organizations. This was achieved through firefighter engagement with a comprehensive visualization of the analysis results which afforded easy interaction between the experts, the data, and the researchers.

Ergonomics, safety, and resilience in the helicopter offshore transportation system of Campos Basin

BACKGROUND

Air transportation of personnel to offshore oil platforms is one of the major hazards of this kind of endeavor. Pilot performance is a key factor in the safety of the transportation system.

OBJECTIVE

This study seeks to identify the ergonomic factors present in pilots' activities that may in some way compromise or enhance their performance, the constraints and affordances which they are subject to; and where possible to link these to their associated risk factors.

METHODS

Methodology adopted in this project studies work in its context. It is a merging of Activity Analysis (Guerin et al. 2001) of European tradition with Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA - www.ctaresource.com) articulated with the recent approaches to cognitive systems engineering developed by Professors David Woods and Erik Hollnagel. Fifty-five hours of field interviews provided the input for analysis.

RESULTS

Sixteen ergonomic constraints were identified, some cognitive, some physical, all considered relevant by the research subjects and expert advisers.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the safety record of the personnel transportation system studied is considered acceptable, there is low hanging fruit to be picked which can help improve the system's safety.

Analysis of the resilience of team performance during a nuclear emergency response exercise

The current work presents results from a cognitive task analysis (CTA) of a nuclear disaster simulation. Audio-visual records were collected from an emergency room team composed of individuals from 26 different agencies as they responded to multiple scenarios in a simulated nuclear disaster. This simulation was part of a national emergency response training activity for a nuclear power plant located in a developing country. The objectives of this paper are to describe sources of resilience and brittleness in these activities, identify cues of potential improvements for future emergency simulations, and leveraging the resilience of the emergency response system in case of a real disaster. Multiple CTA techniques were used to gain a better understanding of the cognitive dimensions of the activity and to identify team coordination and crisis management patterns that emerged from the simulation exercises.