Spontaneous Volunteers Research Articles

Decision support for disaster relief: Coordinating spontaneous volunteers

In the aftermath of large-scale disasters, the exploitation of often up to thousands of spontaneous volunteers is crucial to meet the need for surge capacity which cannot be met by official responders. However, the coordination of spontaneous volunteers differs in several regards from that of professional and paid relief workers. Based on empirical requirements identified in interviews with the manager of a professional fire department, we suggest a multi-objective mixed-integer linear optimization problem with lexicographically ordered objective functions, which we refer to as spontaneous volunteer coordination problem (SVCP). Acknowledging that disaster situations are unavoidably linked to uncertainty, we consider uncertainty with a sequence of (deterministic) SVCP instances, where each instance depends on the solutions of previous SVCP instances. We conduct comprehensive computational experiments based on real-world data of a flood disaster that the fire department faced. From our computational results, we derive detailed implications for the fire department on how to use our decision support model. We also derive recommendations for all relief organizations which aim at adopting or adapting our model for the coordination of spontaneous volunteers in a broad set of disasters. Our implications include several recommendations for relief organizations in terms of performing extensive computational tests in order to parameterize and instantiate the generic model before its use during the disaster response phase; thereby we also address tasks to be executed during the preparedness phase of a disaster.

Dilemmas and Discretion in Complex Organizations: Professionals in Collaboration with Spontaneous Volunteers During Disasters

Discretion is of major interest in research on professions. This article focuses on professionals’ discretionary reasoning about collaboration with spontaneous volunteers. By applying theories on discretion and institutional logics and drawing on disaster management research, we analyse interviews with fire and rescue service professionals involved in managing a large-scale forest fire in Sweden. We identify five major dilemmas concerning the involvement of spontaneous volunteers in the official disaster response and analyse the influence on professional reasoning of multiple institutional logics (professional, citizen, bureaucratic and market) embedded in the emergency organization. The analytical framework connects structure and agency by linking institutional logics to discretional reasoning, and the findings clarify professional emergency responders’ perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of involving spontaneous volunteers in an operation.

Spontaneous volunteer coordination during disasters and emergencies: Opportunities, challenges, and risks

During major disaster and emergency events, significant numbers of individuals known as Spontaneous Volunteers (SV) show up to provide help, often in an unplanned fashion. SV play a critical role in responding to major disasters when emergency management services are overwhelmed and require additional capacity. Despite many benefits that may accrue from their usage, there are also some s noteworthy potential challenges. Reviews conducted after some recent disaster events reveal that emergency management service personnel were uncertain as to how they should interact most effectively with these volunteers. Failure to effectively ‘coordinate’ and employ SV during disaster response can create additional complications and risks for already overburdened emergency organizations. This study examines spontaneous volunteer coordination challenges, opportunities, and risks during emergencies and disasters derived from aa survey of emergency managers in Ontario, Canada. A structured questionnaire consisting of five sections and 69 questions was completed by a sample of emergency managers in Ontario. The findings show that their usage of SV is common, however they perceive the SV relationship from a predominantly ‘managerial’ lens or perspective, focusing upon control, predictability and potential liability issues and obstacles regarding their recruitment, and utilization, etc. Lack of federal and provincial legal and legislative supports regarding the usage, liability, and safety of SV are among the main barriers to the more effective realization of their full potential. This paper presents detailed results and implications of this study.

Co-Creating Safety and Security?: Analyzing the Multifaceted Field of Co-Creation in Finland

Complexity is said to be on the rise in the security environment and co-creation has been proposed as one of the ways to respond to this situation. Through co-creation, complexity is addressed by a plurality of actors and actions, instead of by any single authority or recipe. Such an approach is the main premise of the Finnish Concept for Comprehensive Security. This article seeks to answer the question of how co-creation occurs as part of societal safety and security functions in Finland and what kind of challenges and problems are involved therein. The focus of the article is on the regional and local levels of action and on the public-sector/civil-society interface. The data informing this study are 31 small-group discussions that took place in so-called security cafés. This article uses the modified ladder of safety and security co-creation derived from previous research to provide its analytical framework. The ladder of co-creation proved to be a useful analytical tool to address the phenomenon and to illustrate the multifaceted and context-dependent nature of safety and security co-creation. Results indicate that at present co-creation within the safety and security functions in Finland seems to focus more on action-oriented co-production. Citizens as volunteers participate in the functions of producing safety and security, but talk-centered, planning-oriented co-creation seems to be less common. The data also provide clear indications of the darker sides of co-creation. Co-creation may be symbolic and tokenistic in that it remains at a rhetorical level. The data also offer examples of co-contamination (the lowest level of the ladder of co-creation). These examples were related to the roles of spontaneous volunteers and emergent citizen groups.

Opioid Crisis Response and Resilience: Results and Perspectives from a Multi-Agency Tabletop Exercise at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency

Abstract This article presents and discusses, in the new context of COVID-19, findings from a tabletop exercise on response and resilience in the ongoing opioid crisis in Pennsylvania. The exercise was organized by [identifying information removed] and held at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), in further collaboration with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and with the participation of several additional agencies and institutions. It addressed first-responder and whole-community response and resilience to the ongoing opioid crisis. More than 50 experts participated in the one-day program that involved state and local agencies, first-responder organizations, as well as academia in a discussion about effectuating comprehensive response to overdose incidents. Participant experts represented a wide array of backgrounds, including state and local law enforcement agencies; emergency medical technicians; public health and health care professionals; and scholars from the fields of law, security studies, public policy, and public health, among other relevant areas. Participants addressed specific challenges, including resource sharing among responders; capacity-building for long-term recovery; effective integration of non-traditional partners, such as spontaneous volunteers and donors; and public education and outreach to improve prevention. The exercise aimed to strengthen the whole-community approach to emergency response.

Design and validation of an instrument for selecting spontaneous volunteers during emergencies in natural disasters

An instrument for selecting spontaneous volunteers can facilitate efficient decision making and management in large scale natural disasters. This study aimed to design and validate an instrument for selecting spontaneous volunteers during natural disasters in Chile. A mixed-methods study was realized. In the qualitative component, the instrument's items were derived from a competence profile for spontaneous volunteers, which was defined through interviews with disaster risk management experts. In the quantitative component, content validity was assessed measuring inter-rater (expert) agreement, and construct validity was determined by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a sample of 117 volunteers in Chile, who answered the instrument. The instrument's preliminary version comprised 45 items and 5 dimensions of competence (knowledge, skills, behavior, motivation, and social desirability). The expert raters had a good degree of agreement (ICC = 0.581, p < 0.001), suggested the elimination of 10 items and the modification of 9 items. Finally, the CFA confirmed the 5-dimension structure for a total of 18 items. Fit was found to be adequate (χ2(125) = 145.38, p = 0.1027; RMSEA = 0.039; CFI = 0.938; and TLI = 0.924) and internal consistency was deemed acceptable (α = 0.74). The reliability and validity of the proposed instrument for selecting spontaneous volunteers suggests that it can be used to support the efforts of local humanitarian relief organizations.

Medical Volunteers During Pandemics, Disasters, and Other Emergencies: Management Best Practices

How best to utilize volunteers during medical emergencies is an essential part of hospital compliance planning. Onboarding recruited and spontaneous volunteers during crisis situations require careful consideration of multiple legal issues. Volunteer planning becomes more complex if volunteers move across state lines because applicable tort immunity statutes, compensation limits, and workers compensation regimes vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another. Effective planning for volunteers requires these and other issues to be addressed well in advance of actual emergencies. Although predicting the scope or severity of any future crisis is impossible, the provided checklist of management best practices should facilitate enhanced care, decreased risk, and lowered costs.

VOLUNTEERING AS A MANIFESTATION OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE’S SOCIAL ACTIVITY

The article presents the results of an organized study and spontaneous volunteer activities of young people, reveals the specificity of social practices and the peculiarities of “detachment” motivation and “spontaneous” volunteering. Volunteer activity of young people is seen as a manifestation of social activity, including individual / personal and group / collective forms. The empirical study was carried out using the methodological technique of triangulation — a combination of quantitative and qualitative strategies for collecting and analyzing data: a questionnaire survey of young volunteers (N = 131) and in-depth semi-formalized interviews (18 informants). Based on the data analysis results, the main motives of volunteers, key areas of volunteering, changes related to the pandemic and the role of volunteers in this period, the prospects for the development of detachment volunteering are revealed. The advantages and limitations of organized (detachment) and spontaneous volunteering, barriers in the development of young people’s social activity are revealed. The Russian and foreign experience of youth involvement in volunteering is presented, an analysis of trends in the development of youth volunteering, institutional conditions and limitations manifested in the practice of volunteering is presented. The study showed that the key advantages of squad volunteering are the presence of an organizer coordinating the work, the ability to do more good deeds, the presence of like-minded people, access to events closed to other volunteers, the opportunity to become a leader of the volunteer squad. The main barriers in the implementation of volunteer activities are associated with the registration procedure for applications for events, lack of resources, excessive formalization. As a recommendation based on the results of the study, in order to support the positive social activity of young people, it was proposed to create resource centers that would allow coordinating the work of volunteers and ensuring continuity in volunteering.

Emotion management of disaster volunteers: the delicate balance between control and recognition

Authorities always need help in disaster situations, and in line with the current trend of community resilience, they see support from active citizens as a promising solution. However, the uncontrolled inflow of spontaneous volunteers and other resources into a disaster area poses serious dilemmas for professional responders. The uniqueness of this study lies in its approach to authorities’ management of spontaneous volunteers from the perspective of the sociology of emotions. Drawing on an interactionist perspective of emotions, the objective is to deepen our understanding of how and why professional responders use interpersonal emotion management in interactions with spontaneous volunteers during disasters. We discuss this issue in relation to a specific disaster operation. Building on findings from interviews with personnel from the fire and rescue services, key officials and volunteers involved in the management of a large-scale forest fire in Sweden, we show that professionals’ emotion management in interactions with volunteers requires a balance between the control and recognition of volunteer activities. Specific emotion management techniques and an overarching rule about expressing gratitude to spontaneous volunteers are identified and discussed in relation to the professionals’ rationale for their emotion management. We argue that emotion management is a crucial aspect of the interaction between professionals and volunteers, with important implications for disaster management and the legitimacy of the authorities in the eyes of citizens.

Assigning spontaneous volunteers to relief efforts under uncertainty in task demand and volunteer availability

In the wake of a disaster, people from nearby areas often converge to assist the affected community. Spontaneous volunteers are not affiliated with relief agencies but are in a unique position to provide invaluable aid at a crucial point in the disaster cycle. Often, these volunteers are ineffectively used or refused altogether. Volunteer Reception Centers (VRCs) can benefit from improved strategies to integrate the influx of spontaneous volunteers. In this paper, a multi-server queuing model is formulated to represent the dynamics of assigning spontaneous volunteers to tasks in a post-disaster setting. In particular, we consider the case of stochastic arrival of demand for service and stochastic arrival of volunteers, whose time in service is also stochastic. These assumptions mimic disaster relief tasks such as distribution of relief items, where both beneficiaries and volunteers arrive randomly. An optimal policy for assigning volunteers to tasks is generated using a Markov Decision Process. We then use simulation to compare the optimal policy against several heuristic policies and discuss real world implications.

A structured methodology to peer review disaster risk reduction activities: The Viable System Review

This paper develops a theoretically underpinned peer review approach (called Viable System Review) to assess and strengthen disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices. This topic is timely as countries and cities look to learn lessons from others to respond to global priorities on DRR. Unlike other peer review methodologies which rely on expert intuition to navigate peer review issues, our new methodology structures the peer review process through an organising framework of concepts. That framework is theoretically underpinned by systems thinking and concepts from the Viable System Model which provides a comprehensive, tested approach to assess organisational performance. The paper explores the development and application of our new peer review methodology (which we call Viable System Review) to the policy developed by Concepcion Province (Chile) on involving spontaneous volunteers in disaster situations. The peer review took place over six days, involved seven reviewers, and focused on identifying good practices, opportunities to enhance practice, and lessons they could take back to their home organisations. The paper presents our Viable System Review methodology, reflects on its application, and discusses its practical and theoretical contributions.

Spontaneous volunteerism in disasters, managerial inputs and policy implications from Italian case studies

The landscape of the emergency response system is rapidly changing, due also to an increasing frequency of natural and man-made disasters. Nowadays, the involvement of citizens into the whole emergency management is inevitable and indispensable, from preparedness to recovery operations. Drawing on international disaster management literature, this research analyzes and compares the management of spontaneous volunteers during six emergency events that recently occurred in Italy. The research’s aims are to present current tendencies of the Italian emergency volunteerism, to provide operational recommendations for organizations that may be in charge of managing unaffiliated volunteers and to propose some hints for a reform process of the Italian Civil Protection System towards a recognition of the spontaneous volunteerism in emergency. Starting from the research’s findings, the study underlines the latest trends in the field of emergency operations, at a local and international level, and their policy implications, within the Italian context.

“Those who Agree to Play on our Terms will be Taken In”: A Qualitative Study on the Perceptions of Public Authorities and Ngo Representatives regarding Self-Organizing Fourth-Sector Activity

Interest is growing in the role of spontaneous volunteers and emergent citizens groups in safety and security functions. This study connects those actors to the broad concept of the self-organizing fourth sector and analyzes the opinions of more than 200 Finnish representatives of public-and the third-sector organizations gathered through interviews and small group discussion on the tensions related to fourth-sector activity. The study reveals a strong desire to control the fourth sector, a desire that dominates any associated desire to enable it. The tension between enabling and controlling can be tamed by moving the fourth-sector actors under the control of the third sector. However, the role of the fourth sector is then reduced to being merely an extra pair of hands, and its self-organizing and emergent nature is subsumed. The debate over the paradox of spontaneous volunteering needs to be resolved before the fourth sector becomes a normal and acknowledged part of the security and safety functions.

Embracing and integrating spontaneous volunteers in emergency response – A climate related incident in Denmark

The paper studies the response to a coastal flooding in Roskilde Municipality, Denmark, which included a relatively large number of spontaneous volunteers, which is a rare and practically undescribed phenomenon in Denmark. The particular focus of the study is how emergency authorities can embrace and integrate spontaneous volunteers in emergency response. In the paper an analytical model is developed abductively, which suggests that the ideology and inclusion practices of the emergency authorities are important factors that need to be studied more to understand the integration of spontaneous volunteers in emergency response. The study is based on document analysis, media and social media analysis and qualitative interviews. The study concludes that the involvement of spontaneous volunteers in emergency response contributes to emergency management quality if appropriate management approaches are applied.

Emergency Situations and the Defence of Necessity

This article explores the extent to which the criminal law defence of necessity in both its excusatory and justificatory forms can apply appropriately in situations of emergency or natural disaster. Some particular problems are examined, including the possible limitation of the defence to responses to threats to life rather than threats to property and arguments that the defence only applies to persons to whom a defendant owed some duty of protection. The article draws on research into disaster response and recovery to suggest that several formulations of the defence are not well-suited to protect disaster responders, particularly spontaneous volunteer responders, and calls for reform to reconcile more effectively the competing interests and policy imperatives arising in disaster situations.

Spontaneous Volunteering in Social Crises: Self-Organization and Coordination

This article investigates spontaneous volunteering during the social crisis referred to as the “European 2015 refugee crisis.” The situation was politically controversial and the vacuum in humanitarian aid was filled by civil society, including large numbers of spontaneous volunteers (SVs). Based on empirical research, we analyzed the responses and the experiences of SVs working under the auspices of civil society organizations and derived management implications. The findings show that the environment of spontaneous volunteering in social crises differs from that in natural disaster situations. SVs partly substitute official response systems and this results in a high degree of self-organization. Thus, “structured self-organization,” that is finding a suitable complementary relationship between self-organization and coordination, is crucial for the efficiency of SVs’ work, and their satisfaction, well-being, and commitment. Structured self-organization requires (a) fluid structures that enable autonomy, (b) orienting framework conditions, and (c) resources for care and coordination.

The management of spontaneous volunteers: A successful model from a flood emergency in Italy

This paper presents an analysis of the management of spontaneous volunteers, mainly led by a local non-profit organisation, during the flood emergency that occurred in Central Italy in May 2014. The purpose of the study is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the aforementioned management, in order to elaborate on a model that may be developed further through comparisons with other case studies and applications in the context of other emergencies. This case study reiterates the importance of spontaneous volunteers during emergencies, and their appropriate management is crucial in achieving an efficient and effective volunteer service, even though it may be administered by a non-official responder organisation.In this study, the management of spontaneous volunteers was firstly investigated through a brief literature review. Thereafter, a case study was modelled by the application of the type zero method of integration definition for function modelling language, and conduct of interviews and surveys. Finally, the built model was evaluated according to major guides and manuals on this topic. Consequently, the result of the study may be adopted and utilised by other organisations engaged in similar emergencies. Moreover, it can serve as a starting point for further research and development of policies and guidelines for emergency response.

A need to help: stories of emergent behaviour from the scene of accident

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how spontaneous volunteers make sense of their actions at the scene of accident. More specifically, this paper focusses on the moral aspects of this sense-making process in terms of how spontaneous volunteers justify their own and others actions at the scene of accident through moral positioning.Design/methodology/approachThis is done through a narrative analysis of volunteers’ retrospective stories from the scene of accident. The empirical material consists of interviews with 12 witnesses to traffic accidents.FindingsThe narrative analysis identifies two central storylines: the interviewees frame their own and others’ actions through norms of how one should act, and the interviewees frame their own actions by presenting themselves as a person of a certain type, sometimes positioned against an real or imaginative “other”.Originality/valueDisaster sociologists have long argued that emergent behaviours and norms are one of the phenomena distinguishing disasters from everyday emergencies. However, as this paper shows, emergent behaviours and norms are also present at everyday emergencies such as traffic accidents where spontaneous volunteers can play an important role by filling the void before the arrival of emergency services.

Perilaku Menolong Relawan Spontan Bencana Alam

The vulnerable conditions of Indonesia, especially Yogyakarta, to natural disastersled a lot of volunteers who want to help the survivor. Many of volunteers joined the socialcommunity or formal organization, but many of them do not belong to any social communityor organization and does not have the ability to handle the condition of natural disaster stillhelp the victims. These individuals referred as spontaneous volunteers. The aim of this studyis to determine the helping behavior conducted by spontaneous volunteers. The approachused in this study is qualitative specifically phenomenology. Data was collected by a semi-structured in-depth interview. Informants of this study consisted of three individuals, two ofthem was volunteered when the eruption of Mount Merapi occurred in 2010, and the otherone was volunteered in Banjarnegara’s landslide in 2014. Result showed that there arechanges of helping behavior from spontaneous to formal planned form of helping. There arealso several factors that encourage or inhibit their helping behavior.

Canadian citizens volunteering in disasters: From emergence to networked governance

How to improve coordination between formal and unaffiliated or spontaneous volunteers after emergencies is currently an international question with a high profile. Drawing on international disaster management literature and experiences and recent crisis events in Canada, our analysis examines four Canadian case studies to show that the inclusion of citizens in EM is becoming indispensable, as simultaneously as the frequency and intensity of natural disasters are seen to be growing due to climate change, and citizens are increasingly presenting their labour and resources as assets to be drawn on in emergency and postemergency situations. In this context, Canadian municipalities are starting to better manage the unpredictability of spontaneous citizen volunteering in emergencies by building anticipatory structures of networked governance for integrating diverse, pre‐existing, and in some cases, pre‐identified groups of citizens as volunteers in emergency management functions. Additionally, as the role of voluntary service organizations is becoming elevated in emergency response and recovery in Canada, these organizations can prospectively play the role of brokers to help emergency management agencies access and manage community‐based networks of voluntary resources.