Influences on threat assessment in a military context

Bang, Martin; Liwång, Hans

doi:10.1080/14751798.2016.1199118

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…First, their effective use is reliant on extensive prior experience in an area of expertise (Klein et al 2010). They should not be applied by less experienced decision-makers who are unable to filter and interpret key situational information and recall a satisfactory solution from prior experience (Bang and Liwång 2016). Furthermore, concerns were identified that these strategies may be susceptible to misdiagnosis and decision errors, particularly where a rapidly evolving situation is chaotic with time and emotional pressure (Perona et al 2019;Marusich et al 2016;Murdoch 2019).…”

Section: Enquiry Line Four: Critical Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Penney

Launder²,

Cuthbertson

et al. 2022

Cogn Tech Work

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Military and emergency response remain inherently dangerous occupations that require the ability to accurately assess threats and make critical decisions under significant time pressures. The cognitive processes associated with these abilities are complex and have been the subject of several significant, albeit service specific studies. Here, we present an attempt at finding the commonalities in threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making for emergency response across police, military, ambulance, and fire services. Relevant research is identified and critically appraised through a systematic literature review of English-language studies published from January 2000 through July 2020 on threat assessment and critical decision-making theory in dynamic emergency service and military environments. A total of 10,084 titles and abstracts were reviewed, with 94 identified as suitable for inclusion in the study. We then present our findings focused on six lines of enquiry: Bibliometrics, Language, Situation Awareness, Critical Decision Making, Actions, and Evaluation. We then thematically analyse these findings to reveal the commonalities between the four services. Despite existing single or dual service studies in the field, this research is significant in that it is the first examine decision making and threat assessment theory across all four contexts of military, police, fire and ambulance services, but it is also the first to assess the state of knowledge and explore the extent that commonality exists and models or practices can be applied across each discipline. The results demonstrate all military and emergency services personnel apply both intuitive and formal decision-making processes, depending on multiple situational and individual factors. Institutional restriction of decision-making to a single process at the expense of the consideration of others, or the inappropriate training and application of otherwise appropriate decision-making processes in certain circumstances is likely to increase the potential for adverse outcomes, or at the very least restrict peak performance being achieved. The applications of the findings of the study not only extend to facilitating improved practice in each of the individual services examined, but provide a basis to assist future research, and contribute to the literature exploring threat assessment and decision making in dynamic contexts.

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Section: Enquiry Line Four: Critical Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Penney

Launder²,

Cuthbertson

et al. 2022

Cogn Tech Work

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“…A first attempt to answer this has been done in a separate article in which one of the rules-in-use from this case was tested in an experiment. The result showed a statistically significant influence especially regarding the reluctance to lower threat levels based on previously conducted threat assessments (Bang & Liwång, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…This resulted in decreased information regarding attacks in those areas, despite the sharp increase of attacks in problematic areas. The question raised was how the data should be interpreted; although the number of attacks was declining, the intelligence officer assigned to the task thought that the attacks had never been so intense (Bang, 2016).…”

Section: Rules-in-use Connected To Positionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional influence on assessments: the institutional analysis and development framework applied to military intelligence

Bang

2018

The International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public

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How can we understand intelligence assessments and intelligence work? The intelligence literature offers several plausible causes of failures and the consequences of such failures. However, there is a direct lack of theories or frameworks that connect these variables, that is, there is an incomplete understanding of both how those variables interact and their underlying mechanisms. Failures as such do only give one part of the picture. Why intelligence succeed is equally if not more important to understand. The military intelligence service from an institutional perspective may help to give this understanding. This study connects these variables with Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which yields a model to understand the mechanisms of institutional on the assessment and lays a foundation for a common terminology. The study uses the Swedish military intelligence institution active in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2012 as a case.

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“…Furthermore, the literature also identifies factors operating across the services that may limit or facilitate the development of situation awareness. For example, complicating factors may include the situation context and complexity (Snowden, 2002), the volume of information and time available to process it (Penney, 2019), human cognitive limitations and biases (Bang & Liwång, 2016; Harman et al, 2019; Marusich et al, 2016), and fixation on a restricted set of cues, otherwise known as tunnel vision, at the expense of other required information (Akinola & Mendes, 2012; Harman et al, 2019; Verhage et al, 2018). Conversely, prior experience (expertize) allows experts to more quickly identify and understand key information to build a more accurate mental model of the current and projected situation.…”

Section: Commonalities Identified In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a common framework to support decision‐making in high‐risk, low‐time environments

Launder¹,

Penney

2023

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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In a recently published study, we completed a systematic literature review of 10,084 peer reviewed English language studies since 2000 within the context of threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision‐making in police, military, ambulance, and firefighting contexts. The results of our descriptive analysis found that although research into threat assessment and decision‐making has been historically ‘siloed’ from a service context perspective there are nonetheless some common elements that have either independently identified or in some instances coevolved. The insights gained and lessons learned from this vast data pool enabled the enhancement of the urban fire service operational response‐based SPAR decision framework into the Situation, Context, Decision, Plan, Act, Review or SPAR (CD) framework, a true interoperable all hazards and all services decision‐making framework that not only incorporates complexity analysis and contextual factors but is applicable to the full spectrum of emergency management operations. It is hoped that the application of a common framework may facilitate cross industry learnings by applying a more consistent lens for the review of high‐risk, low‐time decisions and the identification of common decision errors and effectiveness (and measurement) of current strategies to improve decision‐making including learning and development and policy and procedure design and implementation. While the SPAR (CD) framework has been developed based on research in high consequence and low time emergency service and military environments, we posit it is equally as applicable in other environments including business contexts and board rooms wherever decisions are required.

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Influences on threat assessment in a military context

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Institutional influence on assessments: the institutional analysis and development framework applied to military intelligence

Towards a common framework to support decision‐making in high‐risk, low‐time environments

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