Improving Disaster Response Plans With STECA: An Application

In: International journal of disaster response and emergency management: an official publication of the Information Resources Management Association, Volume 3, Issue 1, p. 46-64

Abstract

In order to have immediate and effective management of crises and emergencies, natural and technological disaster response plans are created. These plans define the elements of a system responsible to manage a disaster, their roles, and responsibilities together with their interactions. In some cases, however, the system which is formed based on these plans fails to perform as desired. This paper proposes the utilization of systems theoretic early concept analysis (STECA) as an effective approach to efficiently identify loopholes in existing disaster response plans. STECA was applied to the formal evacuation plan of Greece's Civil Protection Agency due to forest fires and identified thirty one loopholes that were validated against the official prosecutors' investigation reports of the 2018 "Mati" forest fire tragedy in Athens, Greece.