Improving Resilience of Critical Human Systems in CBRN Emergencies: Challenges for First Responders

Today's catastrophes (many of them man-made or at least triggered by human activities) frequently endanger a growing number of humans and larger areas in numerous different ways, calling for more attention concerning dependability and resilience of our environment. Experience tells us that no matter what precautions and quality approaches we take, we will always encounter systems that initially were dependable and ‘suddenly’ become untrustworthy because of some unexpected, unknown cause. A system that in itself is unable to re-establish its dependability, that is, is not resilient (any more), needs an external intervention: For human beings, a physician acts as an intervening system for re-establishing dependability. A complex system can be made resilient by the addition of an Intervention System that intervenes in the case of loss of dependability. In this paper, we investigate the role of First Responders (i.e. fire brigade, ambulance services and police forces) as intervening systems in the case of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear) incidents, aimed at providing resilience. Taking a process view of these interventions, we analyse key processes especially with respect to supporting them by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We identify properties of CBRN incidents and their implications for the activities of First Responders both in training and real assignments. The paper is based on the following study: Chroust et al. “Improving resilience of critical human systems in CBRN-emergencies: challenges for first responders”. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.