J. Groenendaal

Twitter: An Underutilized Potential during Sudden Crises?

The widespread use of Twitter by citizens during sudden crises has convinced communications experts that governments should also actively use Twitter during crises. However, this position seems insufficiently empirically validated. In this article, we want to provide empirical building blocks for an informed approach to the use of Twitter by the government. To this end, we analyze the tweets posted by citizens and governments about the large‐scale fire in Moerdijk (2011), the Netherlands. The results show that by far, most tweets do not contain any new and relevant information for governments and that the tweets posted by governments got buried under an avalanche of citizen tweets. We may conclude that the Moerdijk case does not give rise to advocate a (more) active role of governments on Twitter during sudden crises.

Editorial: Incident Command Systems: A Dynamic Tension among Goals, Rules and Practice

This special issue examines the process of implementation, change and adaptation of Incident Command Systems (ICS) as a strategy for mobilizing and managing disaster operations in comparative perspective, focusing on ICS in practice in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Norway. Shorter essays present perspectives on ICS from China, Japan and New Zealand.The question is whether there is a distinctive organizational framework that is recognizable in all countries as the ICS, or whether there is a general set of principles for mobilizing and organizing emergency response operations that has generated a varied set of ICSs as they have been adapted to different operational contexts, resources, and training procedures for emergency personnel.

It's meaning making, stupid! Success of public leadership during flash crises

Boin et al. (International Review of Public Administration, 18, 2013, 79) and others propose that public crisis leadership consists of several core tasks, among which crisis decision-making and meaning making stand out in “flash crises.” We however argue that successful leadership during a sudden crisis implies being visible and appealing to the public in need of hearing that the shattered world will be healed. When being visible and using the right rhetoric, public leaders are by and large automatically considered proficient crisis decision makers, that is “the right leader in the right place at the right time.”

A closer examination of command and control practices by incident commanders during realistic operational exercises in the Netherlands

Little scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding command and control practices among incident commanders and the extent to which these practices contribute to response safety and efficiency. This paper examines incident command and control practices of 23 battalion chiefs from a Dutch Fire Service during realistic exercises using largely identical scenarios. A helmet-mounted camera in conjunction with field observation was used to gather data. The results show that although incident command and control practices varied in detail, the strategies used were largely the same. No relationship was discovered between incident command and control practices and response safety and efficiency. A reason for the lack of significance of the command and control function was that battalion chiefs relied essentially on information and advice given by crew commanders, which did not provide a basis for insights other than those already present among crew commanders. Implications for practice are provided.