Factors that influence crisis managers and their decision-making ability during extreme events

This paper reviews crisis literature, identifying factors that most challenge decision makers during extreme events. The objectives are to understand the environment in which the emergency manager is working; isolate factors that hinder the decision maker’s ability to implement optimum solutions; and identify structures that best fit the problem type. These objectives are important because extreme events are not well managed. Extreme events are best characterized as wicked problems. Stress, information overload, bias, and uncertainty create an environment that challenges even the best decision makers. Factors must be better understood so that policies, systems, and technologies can be created to better fit the needs of the decision maker. The authors discuss ongoing research efforts and describe systems being designed and implemented that provide a variety of web based collaborative tools, as well as solutions to these wicked problems.