Decision-Making in Crisis Situations

5 How Can We Evaluate the Participants of a Crisis Management Training Exercise?

5.1. Introduction

Feedback provided on catastrophic events such as Fukushima (Japan, 2011) or AZF (France, 2001) highlighted the complexity of strategic decision-making in emergency situations. Besides, the recurrence of crises in the field of major hazards implies that managing organizations participate in crisis management training exercises in order to develop skills both at the individual and the collective level. The limitations of current training in terms of evaluation and debriefing have prompted us to conduct research on the development of a methodology for assessing and facilitating debriefing, called EVADE (EValuation and Assistance for DEbriefing). This methodology, developed following the observation of 39 exercises, is based on the creation of an educational toolkit that makes it possible to structure and formalize the assessment of skills required in a crisis unit. A total of 192 educational objectives, classified according to three levels of difficulty, make up the educational base frame that must be used by facilitators to structure not only technical expectations but also the organizational aspects necessary for the efficient functioning of a crisis unit during crisis management. Observation and assessment tools are set up to conduct real-time assessment of trainees during the simulation exercises in crisis management. What is more, they allow a dynamic assessment that, based ...