Strategic Team Decision-Making during a Simulated Terrorist Attack

Poster presented at the 2017 Defence and Security Doctoral Symposium.Decision-making during major incidents is full of uncertainty, requiring the rapid and coordinated response of the emergency services. The Strategic Coordinating Group (SCG) establish overall responsibility for the response and determine the aims and prioritises within which lower level command will operate. This research was centred around the simulated response of three SCG’s, to a Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attack (MTFA) at a local shopping centre. Each SCG was staged at different time points following the attack, in order to capture the response and recovery phases of the emergency services. Each SCG had between 18-22 participants, drawing on 12 different agencies, including the blue-light services, the Military, NHS, Coroner’s office and local councils. The SCG’s were video-recorded to allow subsequent analysis of the team decision-making. In addition, an electronic questionnaire was distributed to capture individual perception of team performance. The video-recorded data will be analysed using the Event Analysis of Systematic Teamwork method to model the social, task and information networks during the simulated response. It is anticipated that this research will provide an unique insight into how strategic level decisions are made in response to a MTFA.