By Brian A. Carr
Fire departmentsrespond。这三字一句如此平庸差不多not worth writing, but it illustrates how fire departments never really know what’s coming. When an event happens, departments muster resources and deploy trained personnel according to strategic patterns and tactical playbooks. Command staff adopts strategy and tactics based on information received at dispatch, processed during initial size-ups, and modified according to scene progression. This is the nature of the service, and until reliable predicative data analysis can pinpoint where, when, and what emergency will occur, fire department response will follow this model.
Experience and science have so far provided fire departments with a solid foundation for this model. Regression analysis of current fire statistics from the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) show negative trends in the number of fires, as well as in the financial loss due to fires.[1] Similar trends reveal themselves in data for deaths and injuries from fires.
(1)
(2)
这fact is: experience matters, as do theory and science. But the opening sentence of this essay still remains true. Fire departments respond, reacting to the emergency that occurs.
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当然，预备会有所帮助，主动部门通常会接受这种做法。消防部门确定目标危害并对响应区域中的施工类型进行分类，收集必要的数据，并在任何事件前编译计划以进行响应。这为消防部门提供了对紧急响应中未知要素的领先优势和优势。预备是一种最大化消防员安全和火场策略的受信任和测试的方法。消防部门绝对不应避免开发预备。
But preplans present complications. The risk of a计划谬论是一个。
First proposed as a phenomenon to describe how projects consume more resources than originally budgeted,计划谬论由小组设置和计划产生，通常揭示基本的乐观偏见。这哈佛商业评论puts it this way:
当预测风险项目的结果时，高管们都很容易成为心理学家所说的计划谬误的受害者。经理在抓地力中，基于妄想的乐观主义做出决定，而不是基于收益，损失和概率的合理加权。他们高估了福利并低估了成本。他们旋转了成功的场景，同时忽略了错误和错误估计的潜力。结果，管理人员追求不太可能按预算或及时提供预期收益的计划。[2]
A reason this occurs is hardly difficult to determine. After all, stakeholders in a project’s success don’t generally plan for failure. They plan for success, and in the process produce objectives that fit together seamlessly, work within controlled parameters, and follow paradigms that depend on existing or assumed resources. The role of chance and mishap is only marginally considered.
Fire department preplans are nothing if not public safety projects developed under the best of circumstances. Standards exist for conducting and completing them to assist in formulating strategies and tactics, as well as to support firefighter safety.[3] These standards are not detrimental. In fact, that the process follows a system is testament to the thoroughness of firefighting and fire prevention professionals. Preplanning gives the company officer or fire inspector the opportunity to scrutinize a location’s perimeter, access points, fire loads, hazards, and potential for complexity. Information is gathered under controlled conditions and the “building intelligence” supplies data on which to build safe, effective fireground operations. This means firefighters who respond to the area or structure when an emergency occurs arrive on scene with less unknowns to contend with. Arriving units can follow a plan of attack, implement tactics, and assign tasks to mitigate known hazards and obstacles during a fire event.
在某些方面，这种系统的预备方法可以抵消乐观的偏见。当面对障碍物，危害，狭窄的工作空间以及在Preplan中面临的供水挑战时，消防公司和检查人员可以为特定地点问题提出不同的解决方案。是否缺乏市政供水？计划中继抽水，嫩班车或两者兼而有之。进入会很复杂吗？准备好可见的入门团队。结构是否持有II层或EPA的物质List of Lists? Dispatch a hazmat unit with first alarm. Again, local response agencies will understand their hazards and challenges better than outside agencies, preplans help make this possible.
Despite these planning safeguards, however, fire departments repeatedly develop preplans in ways like their business executive counterparts. Data are parsed, resources needs projected, and hazards itemized. Optimism is the goal, and thecommand, lead, and succeedapproach of firefighters is at risk of spinning “scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations.” When the sandbox comes out, hand drawings are prepared, or drag-and-drop computer applications are used, company officers place their apparatus in optimal locations, deliver an effective training size-up, and assign tactics to initial and second-due companies without complication. The plan is reviewed, judged sound, and placed into service as part of the tactical playbook.
但是，响应的艰难条件很少符合理论的理想。Friction是战争研究中的相关概念，涵盖了“ [c]无限的小事件 - 您永远无法真正预见的那种。”这些“结合起来降低了总体表现水平，因此总是远远远远不到预期目标。” [4] Fireground并不能免除这些次要事件的并发症，而这些次要事件的并发症始终始终使显然很容易变得如此困难。” [5]
Again, examples are too numerous to count, but every firefighter will recall episodes where the best laid plans simply failed because of an unforeseen detail. Sometimes the details are trivial—a misplaced tool slows a ready check at the door by a few seconds—whereas at other times they have greater impacts (a hose blows, a pump fails, the house so tidy on the outside hides a hoarder.) Friction adds up, and the actualized plan begins to deviate from the preplan. Sometimes the deviations mount and grow unmanageable. The preplan falters. New plans must be made on the spot.
Coping with friction and surprise of real-world response is a fact of life. Shouldn’t preplans reflect this? Fortunately, a strategy exists that not only strengthens preplanning but also systemically mitigates the worst elements of groupthink and optimism bias.
Known in many industries as apremortem，该战略可以由消防公司和检查人员采用，而无需过多额外的培训或预算要求。实际上，Premortem只是另一个可以查看消防部门回应的镜头。在传统的Preplan符合成功的最佳实践的地方，Premortem颠覆了这种想法，并将其作为Preplan的起点失败。
但是重点是什么？同样，乐观的偏见是关键，而前列可以抵消通常隐藏在Preplans中的成功假设。消防员计划采取行动，调整策略，战术和任务，以实现结构的布局和已知危害。根据什么might出错，并在紧急情况发生之前提供了可疑挑战的答案。从需要在结构内扑灭火灾的人员数量到在响应期间放置设备的位置，Preplans是主动工具，旨在根据未来的预测来塑造动作。最后，这是一场统计游戏在机会竞技场上进行的。[6]
This assessment does not do away with preplans. Readiness is better than blindness in emergency response. That preplans deal with statistics summarizes important elements discussed earlier. These include:
- While the chance of an emergency can be analyzed, it cannot be accurately predicted.
- Real-world response to an incident always involves unforeseen problems. This isfriction。
- Planning is proactive and evolves according to assumption of thresholds a department must meet to make response effective, safe, and successful.
这些要素是人类认知和对未来事件的思考中固有的乐观情绪的潜在。[7]消防员不豁免。对Preplans进行预先分类有助于（但不能根除）偏见。坚果和螺栓很容易采用。
Fire companies and inspectors should compile and complete a preplan according to a department’s procedures. The plan is then provided to the team. Before finalizing it, team members of the company or inspection department are asked to assume that an incident has indeed occurred at the preplanned facility, that response was optimal and occurred according to the preplan’s guidance, and that the whole thing failed.
这next step involves additional team participation and requires each member to write down independently every reason they can think of that contributed to the plan’s failure. Reasons can certainly be numerous, but time allowed for members to consider them should be limited. A good time is five minutes, but company officers and team leaders can adjust this time according to the preplan’s complexity and/or number of participating team members.
Once time has elapsed, team members will take turns reading off a single reason why the preplan failed as it is written. This process proceeds through the group, with each member providing a different reason for failure. The company office (or designee) should record these reasons for discussion. At the end of the sessions, the company officer will have a list in which previously unforeseen reasons for failure can now be analyzed and addressed. The final step of the premortem involve incorporating these table-tops “lessons learned” back into the preplan. This could mean simply tweaking initial response tactics or a wholesale adjustment of strategy. Either way, the premortem exercise adds strength to the preplan.
Gary Klein writes in the哈佛商业评论that premortems differ from traditional “prelaunch risk analysis” by providing valuable “prospective hindsight.”[8] While a seemingly contradictory phrase, benefits gained from hindsight before an incident can only help define issues related to strategy, tactics, and safety.
It is well-known that firefighters are problem solvers. Challenges are invitations to success. This is simultaneously an effective character trait and an invitation to occasionally overreach. By adding premortems to the process of preplan adoption, fire departments can promote what is best in firefighting “can do” attitudes while safeguarding against some of optimism’s hidden problems.
REFERENCES
[1] Data and graphs from USFA, retrieved on February 23, 2018.
[2] Lovallo, D. & Kahneman, D. (July 2003). Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions.哈佛商业评论。Retrieved fromhttps://hbr.org/2003/07/delusions-of-success-how-optimism-undermines-executives-decisions。这article provides a useful review of optimism bias and includes topics for review on over exaggeration of skill, the illusion of control, and how planners minimize the role of luck.
[3] See, for example, Murphy, J. (January 2009). Are You Preplanning Your Buildings?188金宝搏是正规吗。Retrieved from//www.sacthai.com/articles/print/volume-162/issue-1/features/are-you-preplanning-your-buildings.htmland IFSTA’sFire and Emergency Services Company Officer，第五版，第10章。
[4]报价来自Clausewitz的On War, book 7, ed. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 119.
[5]同上，121。
[6] See above comment about predicative analytics. Predicative analytics is essentially statistics modelled by rapid and (ideally) comprehensive data-crunching by computers.
[7] Sharot，T。（2011）。乐观偏见。当前的生物学, Volume 21 (23), 941-945.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.030。
[8] Klein, G. (September 2007). Performing a Project Premortem.哈佛商业评论。Retrieved fromhttps://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem。
Brian Carris a captain and paramedic at Jackson Hole (WY) Fire/EMS, Station #1, A-shift. In addition to structural firefighting and hazardous materials response, Brian is interested in how strategic policy analysis and development can drive research, decision-making, and operations in contemporary fire departments.
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