Performance modelling in the domain of emergency management

The Emergency Management Combined Response System (EMCRS) is the co-ordination system which plans and controls, agencies, such as fire and police, when they respond to major emergencies. An initial combined agency (CA) model of the EMCRS describes its overall 'actual' performance, as concerns its plans. This model supports the diagnosis of co-ordination problems between agencies. However, at present, it fails to take individual agency plans into account. This paper describes an attempt to improve diagnosis of co-ordination problems by decomposing the EMCRS into its parts and modelling each individually, with respect to their plans. The CA model is then used, with individual agency models, to re-interpret overall EMCRS performance. It is concluded that EMCRS decomposition supports more accurate diagnosis of the effect of the co-ordination problems on its overall performance.