Tactics, command, leadership

(Axel Boer) #1

of general concept in conjunction with these operations. What is
important here as well is that one formulates a general concept
that is based on the principal interests’ expectations, i.e. in this
case, based on the needs of those seeking assistance. It is no end
in itself to organise in a certain manner at an incident site. The
organisation is there for a specific purpose, and in conjunction
with the execution of an emergency response operation, this pur-
pose should be fairly concrete and clear due to the fact that one
establishes clear objectives for the response operation.
For practical reasons, it is naturally impossible to create an
entirely new organisation each time an emergency occurs. Some
form of basic structure is needed, or at least that the component
parts of the system are ready. Even if one can create a large por-
tion of the relationships between the parts at the incident site,
and add several new parts (such as by creating more resources),
certain parts and their mutual relationships must be prepared
beforehand, not the least for reasons concerning labour and envi-
ronmental law.
The organisation at the incident site, or otherwise in conjun-
ction with emergency response operations, must serve as an aid.
This is in part for the benefit of personnel, but primarily for the
assistance work that is conducted. This entails that the organisa-
tion that is established for dealing with an emergency must take
consideration to the problems that are to be resolved (on both
the short and long term), how one intends to resolve these pro-
blems and available resources. Moreover, one must consider the
responsibility issues and weigh available competence against the
roles that are necessary for conducting the tasks and the expecta-
tions on these roles that arise.
An important aspect is that the organisation at an incident site
must be built from beneath. One can call this a from­beneath per-
spective, which entails that the system’s structure must be based
on the current situation and on the current need for assistance.
In this respect, one must sometimes take consideration to, among
other things, the number of units in the management system that
each supervisor can handle.

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