Critical incident management : engendering experience through simulation

Crego, JP

Abstract

The world of operational police command is a challenging and complex one,
where significant command decisions need to be made amid uncertainty and
within narrowing time-frames. The consequences attached to these decisions
can often be far reaching and have been in some cases grave, as in the case
of disasters such as those at Bradford and Hillsborough football stadia.
Accordingly, there is a pressing need to instil within key command officers,
the skills and the experience necessary to make these bold and effective
command decisions, but within an environment where such dire
Consequences (as those that follow a disaster) do not arise from mistakes or
inadequacy. The question then becomes how to create such an environment
which is at the same time both safe and sufficiently realistic to provoke similar
decisional reactions to those that would occur at a real event. Even if this
was achievable a further stage would be necessary in which such learning
came to be transferred back into an operational command situation.
This thesis explores in a systemic way the design, implementation, testing,
modification and re-testing of a critical incident management command
simulator whose central tenet was to create an immersive simulation that, by
virtue of its high degree of fidelity, was capable of engendering experience of
the management of critical incidents for a target population comprising senior
police command officers.
From tentative beginnings to its operational installation as a fully functional
command training simulator, this thesis maps out the key development
decisions which were informed by the findings of a series of trials,
observations, interviews, surveys and physiological measurements. At the
same time, it describes the theoretical models used to explain the
relationships between and functionality of the system and its individual
components, whilst exploring the dimension of human computer interaction.
This is action research in that the findings it generated led to an incremental
series of modifications to what became an operational training simulator
(named MINERVA) on which useful and transferable command training
actually took place.

Citation

Crego, J. Critical incident management : engendering experience through simulation. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Sep 16, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 16, 2011
• Award Date: Jan 1, 1996