Each year severe wildfires continue to cause significant destruction resulting in the loss of life, property, critical infrastructure, and the environment. In an effort to increase community preparedness and resilience to wildfire, international jurisdictions have adopted both guiding principles and prescriptive codes that apply to both urban planning and fire engineering design of buildings within the wildland-urban interface. These measures are intended to protect occupants, enhance the survivability of structures from different fire exposure mechanisms, and increase the chances of successful firefighting operations. However, research has identified (i) inconsistent approaches to regulation and governance; (ii) limited research on which urban design and building standards are based; and (iii) misaligned or contradictory urban design and building standards. This not only stifles the use of development proposing suitable performance-based design that could achieve the required outcomes but can increase administrative burdens and development costs without increasing safety. The aim of this current study is to contribute to addressing identified shortfalls by identifying and distilling the last 23 years of research in the field related to (i) the development of evidence-based performance requirements, and (ii) the application of effective governance arrangements in order to enhance urban design and wildfire engineering practices. These aims are achieved through a systematic literature review. Ultimately, however, of the 608 initial articles captured in the identification phase of the SLR, not a single article provided insight into the most effective regulatory or governance mechanism, and only three provided criteria suitable for adoption as a performance requirement. While the aims of this study were only partially achieved, it does provide a foundation for the field by way of identifying and distilling the current state of practice.

Fire curves provide a simplified yet practical and operational description of a fire over time, and are widely used in engineering applications for building design and risk assessment. They are generally fit for deterministic performance-based applications, where a quantitative description of the reasonable level of hazard associated with the fire is compared against performance metrics to assess the suitability of a particular design. Although the use of fire curves in performance-based applications is now well established for urban developments, its use in the context of wildland-urban interface (WUI) building design remains in its infancy. This paper presents a new fire curve, here referred to as wildfire curve, suitable for applications in the WUI. The curve was derived from more than 20.000 brightness temperature measurement locations acquired during a 150 x 200 m2 prescribed gorse shrub burn using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology, and 25 in-situ temperature probes evenly spaced inside the experimental plot. The measurements were linked to its local behaviour using an overhead visual video footage and Light-Detection-and-Ranging (LiDAR) data of the vegetation canopy. Furthermore, this paper proposes and discusses a methodology to estimate heat release rate from the proposed wildfire curve, enabling more comprehensive fire engineering design and risk assessment applications.

Managing emergencies is taxing for individuals due to the stress of making decisions in dangerous, high-stakes and time-constrained environments. These complex, dynamic environments also make it difficult to coordinate as other responders perform different roles that may have conflicting goals. This study explored some of the challenges faced by emergency management decision-makers through a literature review of 70 papers identified from SCOPUS and EBSCO database searches. Three major challenges for emergency management were identified: stress and fatigue, interoperability and ethical decision-making. Each of these challenges is examined to explore their nature and how they are likely to evolve in the future. This paper provides helpful advice on how to mitigate these challenges. We argue that to better meet these challenges, emergency services organisations need to develop and maintain appropriate doctrine and training, develop a supportive organisational culture and effectively learn the lessons of previous critical incidents.

It has been almost a decade since Gonzalez-Mathiesen and March (2014) completed their international analysis that identified 9 design features for wildfire risk reduction via urban planning. Despite their recommendations and subsequent global attempts to enhance and improve resilience from an urban design perspective, wildfires1 remain one of the costliest hazards globally, both from a financial and a human perspective. This continued devastation raises the question as to whether urban design and wildfire engineering practices have either been adopted or changed since Gonzalez-Mathiesen and March (2014). To consider this, this paper presents a review and comparison of contemporary international wildland-urban-interface-related urban design legislation, policy and frameworks. Inconsistent approaches to addressing wildfire-related risk, and at times competing standards required between planning and building approaches were identified. These only serve to further reduce the potential effectiveness of measures intended to improve wildfire resilience at the national and international scales. Future work should focus on establishing evidence-based performance standards that emphasise the practical application of the findings of the best available current research to be incorporated into planning and construction. At the same time, it may be necessary to review policy approaches to clearly align key definitions of tolerable risk as well as provide clarification about how performance standards can be demonstrated.

Decision-making in emergency situations, such as those faced by fire, police, and health service personnel, presents unique challenges due to the high-stakes and time-pressured environment. Here we aim to better understand what emergency responders regard as constituting 'good' and 'bad' decisions in emergency situations. We administered a modified Delphi study, eliciting opinions from decision-makers across all these sectors towards consensus around the key elements of good and bad decision-making. Participants were first asked to define what makes a 'good' and a 'bad' decision, and subsequently to identify the top five most important elements of each. While consensus was not found, important insights were identified that can assist improve the standard of decision making at all levels of emergency response and management. We observed (i) a lack of a common understanding between participants of what a decision is, and how a decision differs from pre-decision and postdecision components; (ii) responses varied according to whether a free text description or the identification of separate elements was requested; (iii) respondents valued 'goodness' across different and at times unrelated components a scaled measure of decision quality as opposed to a binary evaluation of 'rightness'; and (iv) pre- and postdecision elements are considered more important than the decision itself when determining the quality of a decision. To address the issues highlighted by the study we recommend improvements in training, and improvements to organization doctrine related to decision making, risk tolerance, assessment of decision quality and development of intent-based or principle-based operational guidance. Ultimately, incident controllers from all services must remain cognizant that they will face considerable scrutiny if they cannot explain how they arrived at the decision they made.

Decision-making in disasters and major crises faced by emergency services globally is a difficult combination of science and art to master. To assist decision-makers in these environments, a number of cognitive aids have been developed and subsequently adopted by individuals and organisations alike. However, these aids vary according to their intent and the context in which they are intended to be applied. This review explores the use of cognitive aids in the context of emergency management and explores how existing knowledge regarding the use of cognitive aids from other industries may be translated to emergency management. An iterative literature review of academic and industry material related to cognitive aids during incident and crisis response across a broad range of international emergency service and other industries within the last 20 years was completed. Ultimately, cognitive aids are not a silver bullet when it comes to decision-making in the emergency management context. The correct tool (that is correctly designed) must be correctly applied by trained and competent end users. The Australian emergency management sector may benefit from future research exploring how these existing tools adhere to the good practice principles identified in this study.

The importance of training for effective performance in high-stakes, high-risk work settings is well-known. Successful training is the systematic acquisition of skills, rules, concepts or attitudes that result in improved work performance. Simply exposing people to training situations is not sufficient for them to develop knowledge and skills. This will only occur if the activity results in learning. While much training focuses on the development of technical skills, it is important to train people in non-technical skills, such as decision-making. This paper presents the results of a literature review of 95 peer-reviewed articles that consider the current training and exercise practices used to develop emergency management decision-making capability. The different approaches to training can be categorised into 4 types: discussion-based, operation-based, E-based and post-incident debriefs. This paper discusses current practice in emergency management decision-making training in each of these categories together with studies that have evaluated their effectiveness noting the generally limited nature of evaluation studies. To promote evaluation of training, several studies have developed tools to assess the effectiveness of training. Finally, key takeaway points related to emergency management organisational training and exercise programs are provided.

Ethical decision making in disaster and emergency management requires more than good intentions; it also asks for careful consideration and an explicit, systematic approach. The decisions made by leaders and the effects they have in a disaster must carry the confidence of the community to which they serve. Such decisions are critical in settings where resources are scarce; when decisions are perceived as unjust, the consequences may erode public trust, result in moral injury to staff, and cause community division. To understand how decisions in these settings are informed by ethics, a systematic literature review was conducted to determine what ethical guidance informs decision making in disaster and emergency management. This study found evidence of ethical guidance to inform decision making in disaster management in the humanitarian system, based on humanitarian principles. Evidence of the application of an ethical framework to guide or reference decision making was varied or absent in other emergency management agencies or systems. Development and validation of ethical frameworks to support decision making in disaster management practice is recommended.

In a recently published study, we completed a systematic literature review of 10,084 peer reviewed English language studies since 2000 within the context of threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and firefighting contexts. The results of our descriptive analysis found that although research into threat assessment and decision-making has been historically 'siloed' from a service context perspective there are nonetheless some common elements that have either independently identified or in some instances coevolved. The insights gained and lessons learned from this vast data pool enabled the enhancement of the urban fire service operational response-based SPAR decision framework into the Situation, Context, Decision, Plan, Act, Review or SPAR (CD) framework, a true interoperable all hazards and all services decision-making framework that not only incorporates complexity analysis and contextual factors but is applicable to the full spectrum of emergency management operations. It is hoped that the application of a common framework may facilitate cross industry learnings by applying a more consistent lens for the review of high-risk, low-time decisions and the identification of common decision errors and effectiveness (and measurement) of current strategies to improve decision-making including learning and development and policy and procedure design and implementation. While the SPAR (CD) framework has been developed based on research in high consequence and low time emergency service and military environments, we posit it is equally as applicable in other environments including business contexts and board rooms wherever decisions are required.

There is greater competition for funding within the public sector and, combined with the increasing scope of high-risk hazards that emergency services personnel are responsible for is placing greater economic pressure on emergency services worldwide. With this pressure comes additional requirements to justify expenditure and effort across operational and corporate contexts, including the training of career and volunteer personnel to the necessary level of contemporary multi-hazard expertise. Within this context, Australasian fire and emergency services must submit formalised cases for funding through state or Commonwealth treasury departments, in most cases competing with other government departments for limited funding. These are usually assessed based on public and political value and benefit. The investment in new, high-fidelity practical and simulated training environments, let alone a new training academy or college, is expensive and has the potential to be one of the largest capital projects emergency services can undertake. Justifying the cost of new training environments is complex due to the difficulty of translating the technicalities of specialised emergency response into corporate language and because of the lack of data and literature on which to draw guidance. This paper bridges this knowledge gap by building on existing models and research to propose an Emergency Services Training Financial Rationalisation Model (EST-FRM) for the funding of emergency services academies in Australia. The model has potential application wherever financial rationalisation of emergency services facilities is required.

In order to explore the commonalities and differences in decision-making across emergency services organisations, a systematic literature review of over 10,000 peer reviewed English-language studies was undertaken looking at sense-making and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance and firefighting contexts. The insights gained and lessons learnt from this research enabled the development of the Situation, Context, Decision, Plan, Act, Review or S(CD)PAR framework. The new framework is hazard and service agnostic, not only incorporating complexity analysis and contextual factors but also being applicable to the full spectrum of emergency management operations. This paper presents the operational translation of the theoretical S(CD)PAR framework into a multi-sector end-user decision SPAR(CD) model that can guide operational decision-making as well as the development of policy, procedures and learning and assessment tools. While the S(CD)PAR framework and SPAR(CD) model have been developed based on research in high-consequence and low-time emergency services and military environments, they are equally applicable in other environments including business contexts and boardrooms wherever decisions are made. This research and subsequent model are important as it supports a common approach to decision-making and also provides a foundation for teaching and assessing evidence-based decision-making across multiple contexts.

Military and emergency response remain inherently dangerous occupations that require the ability to accurately assess threats and make critical decisions under significant time pressures. The cognitive processes associated with these abilities are complex and have been the subject of several significant, albeit service specific studies. Here, we present an attempt at finding the commonalities in threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making for emergency response across police, military, ambulance, and fire services. Relevant research is identified and critically appraised through a systematic literature review of English-language studies published from January 2000 through July 2020 on threat assessment and critical decision-making theory in dynamic emergency service and military environments. A total of 10,084 titles and abstracts were reviewed, with 94 identified as suitable for inclusion in the study. We then present our findings focused on six lines of enquiry: Bibliometrics, Language, Situation Awareness, Critical Decision Making, Actions, and Evaluation. We then thematically analyse these findings to reveal the commonalities between the four services. Despite existing single or dual service studies in the field, this research is significant in that it is the first examine decision making and threat assessment theory across all four contexts of military, police, fire and ambulance services, but it is also the first to assess the state of knowledge and explore the extent that commonality exists and models or practices can be applied across each discipline. The results demonstrate all military and emergency services personnel apply both intuitive and formal decision-making processes, depending on multiple situational and individual factors. Institutional restriction of decision-making to a single process at the expense of the consideration of others, or the inappropriate training and application of otherwise appropriate decision-making processes in certain circumstances is likely to increase the potential for adverse outcomes, or at the very least restrict peak performance being achieved. The applications of the findings of the study not only extend to facilitating improved practice in each of the individual services examined, but provide a basis to assist future research, and contribute to the literature exploring threat assessment and decision making in dynamic contexts.

Working in high consequence yet low frequency, events Australian fire service Incident Controllers are required to make critical decisions with limited information in time-poor environments, whilst balancing competing priorities and pressures, to successfully solve dynamic large-scale disaster situations involving dozens of personnel within the Incident Management Team, including of front-line responders from multiple jurisdictions. They must also do this within the boundaries of public and political expectations, industrial agreements, and the legal requirement to maintain a safe workplace for all workers, inclusive of volunteers. In addition to these operational objectives, fire services must also provide realistic training to prepare frontline staff, whilst satisfying legislative requirements to provide a safe workplace under legislation that does not distinguish between emergency services and routine business contexts. In order to explore this challenge, in this article we review the different safety standards expected through industrial and legal lenses, and contextualize the results to the firefighting environment in Australia. Whilst an academic argument may be presented that firefighting is a reasonably unique workplace which exposes workers to a higher level of harm than many other workplaces, and that certain levels of firefighter injury and even fatality are acceptable, no exception or distinction is provided for the firefighting context within the relevant safety legislation. Until such time that fire services adopt the legal interpretations and applications and develop true safety management systems as opposed to relying on “dynamic risk assessment” as a defendable position, the ability of fire services and individual Incident Controllers to demonstrate they have managed risk as so far as reasonably practicable will remain ultimately problematic from a legal perspective.

Although the safety performance of the Australian commercial fishing industry has been the subject of multiple investigations, it has ultimately remained undefined. While most Australian industries notify industry regulators of significant workplace incidents and injuries in their operations, the majority of persons in the commercial fishing industry are contractors who are paid piecework and in some jurisdictions specifically excluded from the worker compensation legislation, meaning that most occupational injuries, including fatalities, are not captured in the centralized worker compensation data sets. This study presents the analysis of a systematic review of industry databases, published academic, and, Australian coroners reports to assist improve the definition of the nation's commercial fishing industry safety performance. The analysis shows occupational fatality rates are significantly higher than currently reported, and recurring factors contributing to deaths at sea remain unaddressed. The study is significant as it demonstrates how workplace injuries and deaths can be hidden within data sets applying broad industry classification and provides a foundation for future research in Australian fishing and other industries.

Since 1927 more than 242 formal inquiries and reviews into Australian natural disasters, and 62 international post-incident investigations following firefighter fatalities or injuries during wildfire entrapment and burnover have been completed. Despite the significant number of completed inquires, evidence suggests emergency services continue to repeat mistakes of the past when preparing for, preventing, responding to, and recovering from disasters. Where ongoing mistakes occur, the interventions themselves (including analysis methods) must be questioned as the significant cost of repeated inquiries may divert funding from improving both the capabilities and capacities of the emergency services being investigated. The objective of this paper is to work towards addressing limitations of investigative processes within the context of Australian fire and emergency services. It does this by building upon the Incident Causation Analysis Model (ICAM), and proposes the resultant PESTLE Incident Analysis Model (PIAM). The PIAM is designed to enhance analysis of adverse incidents, and to assist emergency services both communicate and implement recommendations from post-incident investigations and analysis. The PIAM is validated using a historical firefighter entrapment. In doing so this paper demonstrates the suitability of the PIAM technique for both emergency service and more traditional occupational safety investigations, making the critical connection between research and practice that is essential within emergency services worldwide.

The hazard posed by wildland–urban-interface (WUI) fires is recognized by the international fire research community and features as one of nine research need priority threads in the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Research Roadmap. We posit that the first step in the journey to enhancing fire safety engineering at the WUI is to develop a common understanding between developers, engineers, planners, and regulators of the development scope, wildfire problem, technical design solutions, and verification methods to be used. In order to define a fire safety engineering consultation process appropriate for the wildfire context, this paper aims to translate well-established and evidence-based performance-based design (PBD) consultation frameworks and approaches from traditional fire safety engineering to the wildfire context. First, we review international English-language fire safety engineering frameworks that have been developed for the urban context. Next, we distil the results into a streamlined framework, which we call the “CAED Framework”. Finally, we apply and discuss the contextualization of the CAED Framework to the WUI context through a comparative case study of urban and WUI development. In doing so we seek to provide a structure for the development of standardized PBD within the WUI context across jurisdictions internationally, as well as to embed best practices into the emerging field of performance-based wildfire engineering.

In ‘Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster’ Professor Michael Quinlan (2014) identified a series of ten common catastrophic incident risk factors, known as the Ten Pathways, contributing to major incidents in mining and other high hazard industries. This study applies the Quinlan methodology in two separate phases. The first phase of the study explored employee perception of employer effectiveness of fatality prevention against each of the Ten Pathways through a questionnaire of n = 2009 participants at the 2017–2019 Western Australian Government Mines Safety Roadshows. Respondents generally perceived their employer as having a relatively good understanding of the role of risk assessments and their importance in preventing injuries yet perceived their employers as generally ineffective in management system auditing. In the second phase of the study, 71 fatality reports on the Western Australian Government Department of Mines Fatalities register were assessed to identify the Ten Pathways involved in the fatality. The analysis identified fatalities typically included four or five of the Ten Pathways, although none of the investigations analysed all Ten Pathways. A combined assessment of employee perceptions of employer’s effectiveness at fatality prevention and pathways present in the Mines Fatalities register identified which Quinlan Ten Pathways mining organisations should prioritise for fatality prevention. It is recommended that benchmarking safety performance, incident investigations, and reviews of effectiveness of safety management systems include an examination and verification of the organisation’s response to Ten Pathways, a relatively straight forward task which may highlight latent issues or weaknesses that may otherwise remain undetected.

Firefighting at the rural urban interface remains one of the most dangerous activities undertaken by fire services internationally. Whilst there is a significant volume of literature and describing methods for fire engineering safety analysis in the urban environment, a significant gap remains in the context of the rural urban interface. To address this, this article presents the Rural Urban Interface Model (RUIM). An adaptation of the Fire Brigade Intervention Model (FBIM), the RUIM enables systematic analysis of firefighter safety during catastrophic and dynamic wildfire events. When applied correctly, the RUIM provides additional guidance to Incident Controllers and Incident Management Teams regarding the suitability and safety of defensive firefighting strategies. Ultimately, the inclusion of the RUIM as part of operational fire ground analysis may reduce the potential for fatalities or injuries arising from firefighting taskforces being caught in wildfire burnover.

When attempting to suppress severe wildfire the possibility for firefighting crews to be overrun by wildfire, known as entrapment and burnover, remains a catastrophic and all too common occurrence. While improvements have been made to vehicle protection systems to increase the safety of firefighters caught in burnover, the potential effectiveness of these systems remains limited. This study involved systematic analysis of 62 historical entrapment and burnover reports from the USA, Australian and New Zealand from 1978 to 2020 (Phase 1), and 135 simulated wildfires encompassing the 99th percentile of Australian fire weather conditions, fuel structures and terrain (Phase 2). Analysis of historical entrapments identified existing vehicle protection systems have failure points well below the reported Fire Danger Index associated with the majority of house loss during wildfire events in Australia. Increasing the performance threshold of vehicle protection systems to the historical mean fire line intensity identified at the point of entrapment increased efficacy, and, prevented vehicle protection systems being overwhelmed in simulations regardless of Fire Danger Index and up to windspeeds of 55 kmh−1. In order to further improve firefighter protection during entrapment and burnover it is recommended the radiant heat flux performance threshold of vehicle protection systems are increased.