Developing a strategic framework to enhance readiness of UAE law enforcement agencies to effectively respond to road traffic emergencies

Alzaabi, E

Abstract

The high number of road traffic accidents and increasing prevalence of road traffic crises around the world has brought to the fore the need for a higher level of crisis preparedness and response. In the UAE, crisis response times are significantly below target levels with performance gaps in crisis response areas. Within extant literature, there is a lack of understanding or frameworks that guides the development of effective road traffic crisis readiness programmes, identifying key dimensions and measures for optimising response times. There is a need for decision support frameworks specific to road traffic crises, that prioritise and define key performance criteria and measures across all dimensions focused on readiness and response.
The scope of this study is focused on developing a crisis readiness framework for road traffic crisis response for law enforcement agencies in the UAE. The goal is to enhance the organisational effectiveness of law enforcement agencies within the UAE to effectively respond to road traffic crisis situations and disasters. A key research question is: What strategic framework is appropriate to enable the development of strategies and performance indicators to enhance response times of police to road traffic crises? To answer this question, a Delphi Method was utilised that combined questionnaire-based survey and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to collect quantitative and qualitative data, from an expert panel of 16 experienced crisis readiness professionals, on how they prioritise and weight the different strategic criteria, sub-criteria and performance indicators in the context of law enforcement agencies’ traffic response. The findings resulted in the identification, ranking and validation of ten key dimensions of crisis readiness clustered into 3 distinct sets of priority rankings: Response Planning, Resources, Training, and Coordination; Information Management and Communication and Risk and Hazard Assessment; Early Warning, Legal and Institutional Frameworks, Recovery Initiation and Property Protection. The results additionally established the relative priority of sub-criteria for each criterion and validated a broad set of KPIs for the top six ranked criteria. A secondary focus was to investigate the barriers that obstruct the development and implementation of UAE's performance indicators. The findings from primary qualitative and secondary data suggested a number of antecedents associated with inter-organisational, structural and national cultural factors which impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing approach to crisis readiness.
This research makes a contribution to knowledge in identifying the key criteria and performance indicators of crisis readiness for road traffic situations. The findings contribute a comprehensive strategic readiness framework that supports planning and decision-making for the development of organisational capacities that can enhance response times of police to road traffic crises. A management tool is advanced to structure the planning and evaluation of crisis readiness programmes and the development of future strategies around critical dimensions and factors. This framework ranks dimensions of crisis readiness and key sub-criteria in order of priority and relative importance. This model validates the key components of crisis readiness that can support practitioners to structure, standardise and benchmark key processes and elements of crisis response and can direct efforts to optimise different dimensions of crisis readiness at a strategic and operational level.

Citation

Alzaabi, E. Developing a strategic framework to enhance readiness of UAE law enforcement agencies to effectively respond to road traffic emergencies. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Additional Information: Funders : Ministry Of Interior (UAE)
• Award Date: Mar 25, 2021