Abstract: The paper discusses the need for an easy-to-use, easy-to-administer measure that can capture shared understanding in a team of professionals working together towards a successful performance. In the paper the development of such a measure is described using two empirical studies. Command-and-Control tasks are complex and often dynamic, and a way of capturing the degree of which a team of individuals have a common understanding of priorities in such a task is imperative. Two studies are presented. In the first study students participated in a microworld experiment where they tried to rank order pre-determined factors in order to measure shared understanding. In the second study officers from the Swedish Armed Forces participated in an exercise where they rank ordered self-generated factors.

Abstract: Concepts such as trust, shared understanding, cultural differences, mental workload, and organizational structure all impact upon the effectiveness of an organization (e.g., Tindale & Kameda, 2000), and even more so in the context of large scale multinational operations (e.g, Smith, Granlund, & Lindgen, 2010). In order to study these concepts we plan a multinational, distributed experiment with participants from three nations collaborating in the same virtual environment: Canadian, British, and Swedish participants will work together as part of a multinational MTS to deal with a complex task and gain control of a crisis situation. Empirical research on MTS remains limited (see, e.g., DeChurch & Marks, 2006) particularly at the multinational level where the investigation of MTS has been so far focused on case studies and exercises (e.g., Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012). Therefore, there is a need to empirically study multinational MTS in order to assess the specific issues that multinational operations face, notably cultural and languages differences. The simulation environment used as experimental platform for this project is C3Fire (www.c3fire.org, Granlund & Granlund, 2011). C3Fire creates an environment whereby teams must work together to resolve a crisis in the firefighting domain, with the goal of evacuating people in critical areas, putting out the forest fire, and protecting buildings and other areas of value from the burning forest fire. This platform makes it possible to study participants' collaborative processes when dealing with a set of crisis scenarios in the context of a simulated emergency response situation. To deal efficiently with the crisis management operation, participants need to prioritize between different objectives, identify and protect critical areas, and plan and implement activities based on given resources. All these tasks are distributed between team members, compelling participants to exchange information and coordinate within and between teams to execute the task. The task is divided into three areas of responsibility as follows: 1) Information and Planning, responsible for situation assessment and providing the operating picture; 2) Operation and Logistic, responsible for intervention and resource management; and 3) Search and Rescue, responsible for research and management of civilians. C3Fire is designed to: 1) achieve an optimal compromise between internal and external validity; 2) show flexibility in scenario configuration (spectrum of units and roles – including search and rescue functions; Tremblay et al., 2010), allowing researchers to capture emergency response and crisis management and rapid response planning; 3) be highly configurable for testing many different types of teams (e.g., hierarchical vs. horizontal organizations); and 4) readily provide objective, non-intrusive metrics for assessing teamwork effectiveness (including macrocognitive functions and team processes) as well as quantitative measures of task performance (that take into account conflicting mission goals). © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Breakdowns in team cognition are accepted as an explanation for system collapses, especially in complex environments. In the nuclear industry, training for system collapses is a part of the job for control room teams. Such training focus both on improving skills required for recognising and solving disturbances and on improving team processes. This paper presents an approach to team training for nuclear power plant control room teams with the purpose of making the system more resilient by improving debriefing sessions through feedback on shared strategic understanding among team members.

Abstract: Currently, there is a lack of assessment approaches for evaluation of resilient capabilities in simulation games. This paper presents work-in-progress to create such an instrument to be used in crisis management simulation games for the fuel, food, and finance sectors. The “Team Resilience Assessment Method for Simulation” (TRAMS) is based on the Systemic Resilience Model and departs from the assumption that resilient crisis management teams will be able to develop strategies for assuring that anticipation, monitoring, response, recovery, and learning are established and maintained in their respective organizations as well as in the crisis management team. A prototype version of the TRAMS, based on the experiences of representatives from the involved sectors and firmly related to resilience theory, is presented and discussed. The TRAMS instrument will be tested in 30 planned simulations games including participants from the fuel, food, and finance sectors.

Abstract: A qualitative analysis of observation protocols and audio recordings from 14 crisis response exercises has been conducted revealing eight themes reoccurring in multi-disciplinary team discussions about crisis response to large disruptions to the card payment system. The themes were: Coordinate and collaborate, Payment options, Cash circulation, Fuel and transportation, Security, Inform, communicate and the media, Hoarding and rationing, and Vulnerable groups. The analysis suggest that Swedish society is vulnerable to disruptions in the card payment services, largely due to a low diversity in payment options, the lack of prepared back up solutions for payment, and insufficient cash flows to support a cash only scenario. A longer (several days) disruption in the card payment system will demand coordinating mechanisms for information management, available payment options, and preparedness for rapid establishment of cash flows. Today, these mechanisms do not exist. Simulation exercises with stake-holders are an important mean for increasing awareness about these vulnerabilities and the challenges associated with coping with them.

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of situation reports used and created by a crisis management team within the Swedish healthcare sector during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was conducted through a deductive content analysis, where categories were identified based on the concepts of common operational pictures, sensemaking, and situation awareness. In the analysis, support for all identified categories was found. Based on the analysis and the concepts, future recommendations regarding what type of information that ought to be included in situation reports were created. These recommendations include, amongst others, the categories of consequences, how it is perceived by the public, objectives, status and implications of information, future scenarios, actions, resources, and work procedures.

Abstract: Critical infrastructures become more and more entangled and rely extensively on information technology. A deeper insight into the relationships between critical infrastructures enables the actors involved to more quickly understand the severity of information technology disruptions and to identify robust cross-functional mitigating actions. This study illustrates how and why disruptions in the payment system in Sweden could create cascading effects in other critical infrastructures with potentially severe consequences for many citizens, government institutions and companies. Data from document studies, interviews and workshops with field experts reveal seven challenges for collective cross-functional critical infrastructure resilience that need to be dealt with: 1) Shortage of food, fuel, cash, medicine; 2) Limited capacity of alternative payment solutions; 3) Cities are more vulnerable than the countryside; 4) Economically vulnerable groups in society are more severely affected; 5) Trust maintenance needs; 6) Crisis communication needs; 7) Fragmentation of responsibility for critical infrastructures across many actors.

Abstract: This work in progress paper presents an initial evaluation of the observation protocol of the Team Resilience Assessment Method for Simulation (TRAMS) conducted in a crisis response simulation project. TRAMS is designed to assess the resilience of crisis response teams. The TRAMS observation protocol uses six core resilience functions from the Systemic Resilience Model as its theoretical foundation. Three independent observers used the protocol during a pilot study and six actual simulation games. Strategies relating to three out of six core resilience functions could be identified. The observations made were distributed similarly among the observers, indicating that the components of the TRAMS protocol are stable enough to continue developing the protocol. This study describes changes made to the protocol since the original design, and describes how the strategies relating to the six core resilience functions can be identified in the simulation games.