MIND-VERSA: A new Methodology for IdentifyiNg and Determining loopholes and the completeness Value of Emergency ResponSe plAns

Abstract There is a need for organizations and public services to reinforce their overall emergency response capacity based not only in an ad hoc approach e.g. exercises, but also towards a more sophisticated and evidence-based approach to analyze emergency response plans, evaluate their overall capacity and maximize their efficacy based alternatively on modern systems’ theory methods. This paper focuses on the development of a new methodology, utilizing a systems’ theory method, that: a) identifies emergency plans’ loopholes and b) provides a numerical value that indicates the “distance” between what is planned and what should have been planned. For this purpose, a case study has been used and the proposed methodology was applied to the official evacuation plan due to forest fires, of Greece's Civil Protection Agency. Thirty-one missing specifications or loopholes were identified which made the emergency response plan dysfunctional and a value was calculated indicating that there was a considerable distance between the initial plan and the enhanced plan. These results were compared and validated against the prosecutors’ investigation findings of the 2018 forest fire in the small resort of “Mati” Greece, 18 miles east of Athens, where more than 100 people died because of the fire.