Barriers and Facilitators in Interorganizational Disaster Response: Identifying Examples Across Europe

Claudia Berchtold,Larissa Müller,Sonja Grigoleit,Florian Neisser,Philip Sendrowski,Maike Vollmer

doi:10.1007/s13753-020-00249-y

Abstract

Disaster response actors are facing new challenges, which encompass not only new and ever more complex threats but also the need to collaborate across organizational boundaries and even state borders. Depending on scale, these interactions have to work across governance setups, political and legal conditions, organizational cultures, as well as personal preferences and experiences that vary among actors, organizations, and countries. But which concrete measures are taken by crisis management actors at different scales to bridge these challenges and which of these could serve others as example to address comparable challenges in their contexts? This study made attempts to analyze whether certain solutions across organizations and states exist that facilitate effective interorganizational crisis management in the member states of the European Union (EU). It is based on selected expert interviews with representatives of different types of disaster response organizations (health services, police services, fire services, and other crisis management organizations) from seven EU member states (Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Austria, and Greece).

Highlights

Disaster response has become increasingly complex in recent years
Which concrete measures are taken by crisis management actors at different scales to bridge these challenges and which of these could serve others as example to address comparable challenges in their contexts? This study made attempts to analyze whether certain solutions across organizations and states exist that facilitate effective interorganizational crisis management in the member states of the European Union (EU)
The main question for this study was: can we identify practical examples of procedural or technological measures enhancing interorganizational response that could build a basis for further analysis? The explorative approach builds on 12 semistructured expert interviews that were conducted across the EU

Summary

Introduction

While technological development and coordination efforts have added new opportunities to successfully manage complex crises, response settings are gaining complexity, for example, in light of climate change and the resulting more intense natural hazards, or other threats such as terrorist attacks. Events such as the Manchester terrorist attack 2017, or the extreme wildfires of 2017, 2018, and 2019 demonstrate that collaboration requirements relate to cross-organizational settings within one state but may require the deployment of resources across the member states of the European Union (EU). Crisis management systems that involve different levels of decision making, where lower levels are dependent on higher levels, are seen as especially vulnerable to such coordination challenges (Sapountzaki et al 2011)

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