Emergency Response-Ability, People Training Technology and Cost/Benefits

Safety and emergency training traditionally focus on strengthening human (operator) skills and error prevention behaviors to reduce accident and incident rates. However, even with the best of training, emergencies still happen! This paper suggests people training technologies, i.e. human factors, critical action performance, stress management, are required to enhance an individual's “emergency response-ability,” or the ability to properly respond to the emergency when it happens.

Four interactive questions are addressed regarding people training technologies or the “human side” of safety and emergency training: 1) who is to be trained; 2) what is to be trained; 3) how is the training to be accomplished; and, 4) what are the cost/benefits of the training?