Decision Inertia in Emergency Response

The provided source, an excerpt from the 2015 article "Decision inertia: Deciding between least worst outcomes in emergency responses to disasters" by Alison et al., explores the cognitive phenomenon of "decision inertia," which is the failure to act when a decision-maker struggles to choose between equally difficult outcomes. The research utilizes a Naturalistic Decision-Making (NDM) paradigm in a two-day simulated major disaster involving multiple agencies, such as police and fire services, to analyze communication patterns. The study identifies three key barriers—non-time-bounded choice, multiple agencies involved, and a lack of superordinate goals—that reduce interagency communication and increase redundant information seeking within agencies, leading to delayed action. Overall, the work suggests that NDM is a valuable method for studying failures to act in complex, real-world, multi-team environments and stresses the importance of clear strategic direction to ensure timely action execution during crises.