Human factors issues in the management of emergency response at high hazard installations

Development of a model regional emergency response plan for a mining town: The case of Bindura, Zimbabwe.

“…Contradictions and clashes may lead to confusion and errors. Errors may be fatal since all tasks will be carried out under extreme circumstances and in a harsh or even hazardous physical environment [3]. Fatality of errors would be to both the RPs and victims.…”

“…It has been proven that despite a company's best efforts, accidents and in particular catastrophic events cannot be avoided and they occur unexpectedly over their lifetimes [1;2]. Major industrial accidents and catastrophic events, especially fire, explosion or environmental poisoning in communities, may cause great losses [3]. The loss may be due to property damage, loss of life and contamination of the environment.…”

“…Some of the hazards which can potentially lead to loss and hence require mitigation in the form of evacuation, escape and rescue are : blowouts, process leaks, utility areas and systems fires and explosions, fire in accommodation areas, structural collapse, loss of installation stability/position and extreme weather [4] Being prepared with a plan facilitates the readiness to react without delay [2]. Significant efforts must be made to predict these potential abnormal events and also to provide a design which facilitates prevention, early detection and recovery from these scenarios [3].…”

“…This plan describes how such accidents and their consequences should be handled both on-and off company premises. In order to ensure rapid, orderly and effective implementation of emergency and rescue actions, emergency plan is usually pre-established [3]. According to [1] there are three emergency levels -individual, regional and national.…”

Evaluation on Coal Miner’s Emergency Response Capacity Based on the Catastrophe Theory and Triangular Fuzzy Number

“…Lawson et al (2012) recorded the researchers for emergency response measures by sudden emergency scenario description of events and compared with practical response measures to find out the correlation between the actual responding ability and emergency prediction ability to the body, then proposes a new forecast method on emergency response capacity (Lawson, Sharples, Clarke, & Cobb, 2012). In addition, some other scholars also have done related research (Yi, George, Paul, & Lin, 2010;Spranger, Villegas, Kazda, Harris, Mathew, & Migala, 2007;Woodcock & Au, 2013;Ford & Schmidt, 2000). Some Chinese scholars researched the city residents public or emergency response ability evaluation (Wang & Sun, 2011;Yang & Wang, 2009;Yang, 2011;Jiang, 2011;Qian, Tang, & Zhou, 2003;Qian, Tang, & Zhou, 2006).…”