How can the usefulness of capability assessments be improved?

Capability assessments are used in disaster risk management to facilitate decision making regarding capability increasing measures. Recent studies suggest that two factors might determine their usefulness for decision making: whether they include descriptions of an actor's available resources, and how well the actor can accomplish a specific task in case of a disaster. The experimental study presented here aimed at investigating the extent to which these factors influence the perceived usefulness for decision making of four hypothetical capability assessments, differing in whether they contain information regarding the two factors. 89 participants from the Swedish fire and recue services were randomly assigned to rate the perceived usefulness of one of the four versions and the results show that the presence of both factors makes assessments more useful, and resources are especially important to include.