Responding to disaster in socio-technical systems

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 are more commonly performed in low severity events while experimenting is more commonly performed in high severity events. Additionally, behavioral improvisations are more commonly performed in high severity events. Implications of this work for theory and practice are discussed.