The prelude of a crisis
The County Administrative Board, Fortum, the Water Regulation Agency, Härjedalen Municipality, the Police and the Fire and Rescue Service participated in an exercise in which the scenario involved a massive flood in the area of Sveg.
The purpose of the exercise was to study how decision makers and crisis management actors create meaning in a situation that is in progress of developing into a crisis. The exercise was performed as an experiment in order to study how decisions are made in the initial stage of an event, how the communication occur and when the involved persons realize that they are dealing with a critical event.
The goal of the exercise was to gather knowledge about the decision making that occurs in the initial stage of a critical event, in order to contribute to development and understanding of the decision processes which leads to alarms and warnings. By using experiments to create the decision situation in different time spans, it is possible to highlight the decision process that occur prior to an event, which in turn can contribute to a more effective management of critical events and the possibility to mitigate or even prevent a crisis.