CRC Press’s Handbook of Emergency Response: A Human Factors and Systems Engineering Approach was released last week. Edited by Adedeji Badiru and Major Leeann Racz, both of the faculty of the US Air Force Institute of Technology, it is a most interesting compendium of research and analysis of human factors and systems for planning, management, communication, cooperation and coordination in response to natural or man-made disasters and other extreme events.
Personally, I find the whole subject matter fascinating, and am learning a lot. There are chapters on the use of robots and unmanned aircraft. There are four chapters relating to evacuation route selection, management and vehicles. There are chapters on human factors, including analysis of the “cry wolf” effect on a population. And in the chapters I have read so far there is excellent historical analysis of responses to previous events such as Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, and Mitch, the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, the U.K.’s foot-and-mouth outbreak, the SARS epidemic in China, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2011 Joplin tornado and the combination earthquake/tsunami/radiation release in Japan.
Most pertinent, there are several chapters on project management including my own “Time is a Murderer: The Cost of Critical Path Drag in Emergency Response” (Chapter 21). As some people on this site are aware, using PM (and especially critical path drag calculation) to save lives is a passion of mine. So this chapter was absolutely a labor of love for me. It explains:
· How to utilize WBS templates to prepare for different types of emergencies;
· How to develop a Damage Control Chart to show loss of life per elapsed hour;
· How to sequence response actions to be most effective;
· How to optimize a schedule by computing critical path drag, with drag cost measured in the lives being saved or lost for every elapsed hour in setting up specific life-saving measures (e.g., area security, evacuation, search procedures, medical treatment stations).
A number of the readers of this forum have expressed interest in the concepts of critical path drag and drag cost (and even developed software that does it!). I think this chapter shows with great clarity how to use these techniques for iteratively optimizing a critical path schedule, and brings home the sense of how valuable they can be. It also introduces some new techniques (e.g., the Damage Control Chart and the extension of CPM beyond scheduling activities in a project to scheduling projects within a program) that have relevance for any project or program, not just emergency response. But I have to say that the emergency response topics by the other authors in this book are fascinating, in and of themselves.
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Interesting example to highlight the importance of critical path analysis (and the utility of DRAG). As you know, we have built an implementation of DRAG into the latest development of ATC (which is not yet released to market).
I'll add this to my ever growing list of books to read.