An Operational Definition of Emergency Response Capabilities

Well developed emergency response capabilities are crucial in order to keep the risk in a community at low levels. Analysing these capabilities before an emergency occurs is important since it can identify weaknesses and possibilities for improvements. To start off from an operational definition is a possible point of departure in such an analysis. In this paper, therefore, we develop an operational definition of emergency response capabilities, which builds on systems theory and an operational definition of risk. The definition includes three essential elements; the task to which the capability is related, measures of how well that task can be performed and a description of the context affecting the performance of that particular task. The definition makes clear that the context might have large effects on how well a task can be performed and that there are uncertainties both regarding the context and how well a task can be performed given a context. Furthermore, we argue that it should be possible to make judgements about any statements that are made in the analysis regarding their validity and therefore the tasks and performance measures must be defined accordingly. The conclusion is that the operational definition provides an analytic structure which can help actors to gain knowledge about their emergency response capabilities and limits thereof.