The Momentum Behind Developing Practical Crisis and Resilience Guidelines

Dr Bruria Adini has been in Disaster Management for many years. She began her career in the Medical Corps of the Israeli Military Services. During this time, she held many different roles in Healthcare Disaster Management, both from a military and public health perspective. During her 17 years of military service, she trained hospital staff in preparing and responding to disasters using both conventional training and simulations.

It was a natural move for Bruria to transition into a role in the Israeli Ministry of Health where she now serves as a Senior Consultant. She completed a PhD in Health System Management with Ben Gurion University (BGU) in Israel. Bruria has a specific interest in developing a methodology to assess the level of emergency preparedness of hospitals and healthcare facilities.

BGU contributes significantly to offering insights into disaster and resilience management, as this is an area which the University extensively researches. BGU has been investigating resilience at different levels. As part of these efforts, the BGU team in collaboration with other academicians and practitioners designed a tool to measure different communities’ resilience levels – the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measure (CCRAM).They also specialise in the effective use of social media during crises and disasters.

BGU joined the DARWIN consortium as they work in close collaboration with another project partner, Italian public healthcare organisation ISS. Both partners have a joint collaboration laboratory which studies disaster management.

As part of DARWIN, BGU is involved in Work Package (WP) 1 which has three main tasks:

Conduct a literature review in order to categorise different approaches to resilience; this also involves interviewing experts to look at different practices and approaches which are currently being used in the fields of aviation and healthcare
Evaluate which practices, concepts and approaches should be included in the guidelines. Using a modified DELPHI process, DARWIN partners and members of the CoCRP will assess this
Select requirements for the chosen concepts in order to include them in the evolving guidelines; this will ensure the concepts are practical to the end user during an actual crisis

Thus far, WP 1 has completed a literature review, which involved scanning over 1,300 published abstracts. Over 400 of the most relevant articles were then selected and summarised, with partners analysing responses to disaster and crisis. To better understand disaster in a realistic setting, 15 experts were interviewed from the fields of Air Traffic Management to Healthcare. They offered a unique insight into the reality of responding to a disaster or crisis.

Currently, WP1 is at stage 2 in evaluating the concepts, approaches and practices that should be transformed into guidelines. They have sent DARWIN consortium members and CoCRP members a survey allowing them to select which key areas in resilience should be included in the DARWIN guidelines. The aim is to achieve an overall consensus on which concepts are the most practical and important to include.

The research being carried out by this WP is essential to ensure the DARWIN guidelines are relevant, practical and user-friendly. The combination of both desk and field research will ensure the guidelines provide added value to the crisis management community in Europe.

If you work in the crisis and resilience field and would like to get involved in shaping the DARWIN guidelines, you may email Dr Rebecca Forsberg, Manager of DARWIN’s Community of Crisis and Resilience Practitioners at: rebecca.forsberg@umu.se.