New Actors within Respons and Rescue

The people who first reach an accident or disaster area usually do not belong to the traditional response resources, such as emergency services or ambulance personal. Instead, it is people without either special training or equipment. Those are the one who alert about the incident, and by the way they rapport the situation and point out the geographical position has great influence on how the response on the alarm and the initial response is carried out. In some cases, these people can take action and thereby act as first response or become a person with special expertise in the accident.
Depending on the person and the situation the behaviour of these individuals vary greatly. Some may see it as self-evident to contribute with their best efforts at an accident scene while others see it as someone else's responsibility. Specifically, it is possible to distinguish two different types of groups:

1st Organized
2nd Individuals

Group 1 consists of organizations like Sea Rescue Society and the Mountain Rescue Service, which has an official rescue operations, but also recreation organizations and sporting clubs which helped people can have very good knowledge of, and training in how to rescue within their competence shall be carried out, but formal cooperation with the traditional rescue resources are lacking.
Persons in Group 2 have usually more varied skills than those in Group 1, and there’s also a lack of formal management structure.
Few countries in the world have so little proactive involvement in the rescue as Sweden. This can have various causes, among other things, the persons that don’t belong to an existing rescue system can be viewed as uncertainties, and slow down an effective rescue chain. The focus area is to explore the possibility and potential to increase the number of emergency players outside the traditional emergency systems, and to increase the impact of these efforts.
Some recent research tasks are:

• To compare individuals 'and organizations' participation in the rescue of Sweden and other countries as well as understand and describe the differences between the various countries
• To examine both needs and opportunities for increased participation in the rescue of persons outside traditional emergency systems
• To investigate at what stages and types of emergency response and rescue effort, and in what manner, any person may have substantial significance for the outcome
• To investigate individuals' willingness and opportunity to participate and how it can be increased
• To examine how the traditional response of people affected by an expanded effort by other people, and how effective collaboration can be achieved
   

Page responsible: kayvan.y.mojir@liu.se
Last updated: Tue May 25 14:11:28 CEST 2010