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Operational Psychology Research Group

Situation awareness and teamwork in emergency centrals

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A second line incident management team (L2IMT) must gather information from various sources about a remote adverse event, must collaborate between team members with different specializations, tasks and goals, must create a shared understanding of an ambiguous and dynamic situation, plan for future resource use and communicate with external units. Equinor's L2IMT consists of 10-15 team members that muster at times of adverse events at installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, and collaborates with first and third line IMT, air and sea assets, personnel care organization, government agencies, and oil spill response.

In our collaboration with Equinor's L2IMT, we have performed observational studies and field experiments during the organizations full-scale training exercises. We have recorded background variables, communication form and content, psychophysiology and mental models among team members. Our research has developed a tool for measuring the degree of similarity in team members' shared beliefs, and has shown which team and task factors that influence the degree of shared beliefs. Further, we have graphed the social networks in the teams, and shown how different types of team organization influence the team's performance.

Publications:

  • Sætrevik, B. (2015). Psychophysiology, task complexity, and team factors determine emergency response teams’ shared beliefs. Safety Science. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2015.04.017
  • Sætrevik, B., & Eid, J. (2014). The 'similarity index' as an indicator of shared mental models and situation awareness in field studies. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 8(2), 119-136.
  • Kvamme, E. L. S., & Bracht, A. R. B. (2017). Shared Beliefs in Operative Teams: A Social Network Analysis [master thesis].
  • Lothe, A. F. & Lilletvedt, M. E. (2018). Effekten av sosiale nettverk på delt forståelse i beredskapsteam: et feltstudie Hosøy, D. &
  • Westvik, A. L. (2012). Kommunikasjon og situasjonsbevisstheit - Ein feltstudie av andrelinje-beredskapsteam i eit norsk oljeselskap [master thesis].
  • Farstad, M., Hjetland, O, Braseth, D. A., & Line, C. T. (2013). Effekten av kommunikasjon på situasjonsbevissthet hos andrelinje beredskapsentral under en simulert nødsituasjon [master thesis].