International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making 2013, Marseille, France Authors retain copyright of their work H. Chaudet, L. Pellegrin & N. Bonnardel (Eds.). Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM 2013), Marseille, France, 21-24 May 2013. Paris, France: Arpege Science Publishing. ISBN 979-10-92329-00-1 A Model for Firefighting Managers Making Decisions in Emergencies Agoston RESTAS, PhD Department of Fire Prevention and Rescue Control National University of Public Service, Budapest, Hungary ABSTRACT Introduction: firefighting managers have a typical profession, during which making recognition- primed decisions is regularly required. This article gives a thorough review of the topic, than shows a simple and a complex model, created by the author. Method: one of them was an essay analysis, the second one was a word association test, specially created for this research. Results and discussion: the author created a simple and a complex model for firefighting managers making decisions, taking into account time pressure, the limited capability of processing information and also a mechanism complementing the recognition-primed decision. KEYWORDS Firefighting manager, RPD - recognition primed decision, model for making decisions in emergencies. INTRODUCTION The background of recognition of a special decision-making mechanism in the focus of this article was given that, in some cases, no sufficient time is available, necessary for classic decision-making. Therefore, strategists sought to design and plan the details of military operations in advance, however, the application of different decision support instruments in live situations, designed for optimal decisions, failed many times. Decisions made in reality, often not harmonized, could not be harmonized, considering the circumstances, with the pre- formulated strategies, mostly because there was not enough time needed to achieve them. In the article, author illustrates the limits of the possibilities of analytical decision-making, presents the general operating mechanism of recognition-primed decision-making, elaborate its special model relevant to firefighting managers, as well as explore and systemize the factors that facilitate (catalyze) the processes. An important element of the activities of emergency responders is that they cannot or only to a very limited extent can modify the terms of the task, improve them as desired. Despite the differences of environment, indications of the complexity of the situation, the possibility of the volatility in the given situation, uncertainty and ambiguity of the information available can be recognized and well identified (VUCA environment). The peculiarities of each specialized branch can be illustrated through the examples of several authors: Klein (1989) dealt with the analysis of the decision circumstances of the military, Killion (2000) took examples from the navy, Bruce (2011) shows his own medical case, Johansen (20007) simplifies difficult circumstances. The most limiting factor from the above is time, proven also in author’s own studies. This provides a framework impossible to burst and a forced drift, a pressurized channel for the decision-maker, entangled in which one can no longer break free. DECISION-MAKING MECHANISM OF A FIREFIGHTING MANAGER Author refers, at the general model of recognition-primed decisions, mostly to Klein’s work (1989; 1999), which is analyzed by Cohen with others from the direction of critical thinking (Cohen et al., 1996). Killion supplements and combines with his multi-aspect decision-making model, (Killion, 2000). Based on Klein’s work, the essence of recognition-primed decisions is that the decision-maker, through his previous experience, has several different solution schemes in his mind, which he is capable of recalling in a new situation from memory. The decision- maker immediately applies the first pattern that matches the typical features of the given problem of, that is to say, makes decisions fast as a result of previous experience. We know from Miller’s researches also that the short-term memory of the vast majority of people can only process simultaneously 7±2 units of information (Miller, 1956). This information, of course, can be quite different, e.g. a characteristics of fire, the capacity of the response unit, a number, or even the absence of information searched. Author has proven by essay analysis how complex the tasks of emergency responders are (Restas, 2013); this shows that in several cases, simultaneously, there is or would be a need to process many more units of brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Repository of the Academy's Library