Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

 

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• [P928] Responding to Disaster in Socio-technical Systems
  Author(s): Ali Avni Cirik, David Mendonca
  
  

  Abstract
  This paper investigates the cognitive and behavioral processes underlying efforts to respond to disaster within complex socio-technical systems. The main focus of this work is on understanding the impact of disaster severity on these processes. Data for the study are taken from after-action reports compiled by police department personnel who took part in response operations to the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the 19 April 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing. The results of this analysis show strong evidence that hypothesizing and observing cognitive events are more commonly performed in low severity events while experimenting cognitive event is more commonly performed in high severity events. The results also shows weak evidence that goal orienting cognitive event is more commonly performed in high severity events. The results on the behavioral side of the study shows evidence that behavioral improvisations are more commonly performed in high severity events.

  
   

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