International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (3.
7) (2018) 490-493
International Journal of Engineering & Technology
Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET
Research paper
The Role of Human Factors in Emergency Management: A
Malaysian Company Perspective
M F Hussin1, Khairilmizal, S.1, Siti Hawa, B.2, Ahmad Ihsan Mohd Yassin1, Ainul Husna, K.3, Mohd Khairul Mohd
Salleh1, Mohamad Huzaimy Jusoh1, Ahmad Asari Sulaiman1 and Jamil Saadun4
1
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Engineering Complex, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
2
PETRONAS Gas Berhad, Level 50- PETRONAS Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur City Centre, 50088 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3
Institute of Medical Science Technology, UniKL, A1-1, Jalan TKS 1, Taman Kajang Sentral, Selangor, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malay-
sia
4
Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia, Lebuh Wawasan, Presint 7, 62250 Putrajaya, Malaysia
*Corresponding author E-mail: fahmi478@salam.uitm.edu.my
Abstract
Effective emergency management aims to minimize loss during real emergency or disaster. For that reason, Public Listed Oil and Gas
(PLONG) companies have conducted numerous emergency response exercise (ERE) to evaluate their capability in handling emergency
situations, but challenges in PLONG ERE reports obtained did not clearly identify nor categorized challenges based on emergency man-
agement effectiveness. With the objective of identifying challenges and influence of human factors based on elements of emergency
management effectiveness, documents were analysed towards PLONG ERE reports in 2015. Results were then discussed and validated
by experts where it was found that challenges were identified in each element of emergency management and the number of challenges
increases with the increasing Tiers of ERE. Trends were also found at each Tier of ERE indicating that the human factors in each element
of effective emergency management where 46% of the challenges are organization structures. It is believed that more detailed studies
could be contributed to the understanding and further analyse the role of human factors towards effective emergency management..
Keywords: Emergency management, emergency exercise, MNSC 20, Human factors
that there are five (5) elements for an effective emergency man-
1. Introduction agement and these elements are supported by other studies [7], [8].
The five (5) elements of effective emergency management are as
Emergency Management, is the managerial process charged with per following:
creating the cycle framework of prevention, preparedness, re- • command structure
sponse and recovery [1]. A good prevention and preparedness • planning and information management
process may control risk from escalating to incident [2], but • communication
properly managed incident may lead to an effective response and • situation awareness
recovery process. Hence, it is important to have an effective emer- • resources and logistics
gency management. Complying to the international framework on
disaster risk reduction [3], Malaysian government have laid out in Studies by Khairilmizal et. al. [6] which was conducted with lead
Malaysia National Security Council directive 20: Policy and responding agency in Malaysia, also concluded that the five (5)
Mechanism of Disaster in Malaysia (MNSC 20) [4]. MNSC 20 elements of effective emergency management need to be support-
stated that entities in Malaysia including oil and gas company ed by systems, as experts may not always be available all the time.
have the responsibility to developed and test emergency response Based on the five (5) elements of the effective emergency man-
plan accordingly, together with lead responding agency in Malay- agement, it is the objective of this study to identify challenges and
sia [1], [3]. the influence of human factors for each element of effective emer-
gency management..
Due to this, Public Listed Oil and Gas (PLONG) company in Ma-
laysia has developed and maintain emergency plan and teams
conforming to regulatory requirements in managing the physical
2. Materials and Methods
response to incidents and the associated external issues [4]. In
assuring capability and capacity in managing real emergency or Public listed oil and gas (PLONG) companies emergency man-
disaster, PLONG are required to perform numbers of emergency agement are based on three (3) tier response protocol according to
exercise by each of their entity on a yearly basis [5]. To the extent the severity of the emergency itself. Tier1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 pro-
of the researchers knowledge, the are no studies or analysis con- vide a clear demarcation of response control and capability of
ducted in identifying challenges based on emergency management emergency and crisis teams [4]. For the purpose of this study, 276
effectiveness [6] and the influence of human factors in managing PLONG emergency response exercise (ERE) reports that were
emergency effectively. Studies by Khairilmizal et. al. [6] found conducted in 2015 reviewed by researchers. This study which uses
Copyright © 2018 Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
International Journal of Engineering & Technology 491
ERE reports from 2015 considered as beneficial, as the challenges research tool based on credible resources and face validity method
identified was the current challenges in PLONG ERE with the which is defined as a test that appears to be valid or accepted by
data representing the overall facility in the country. the researcher, field experts including decision makers [11], [12].
There are 270 Tier 1 ERE conducted where ten (10) reports Challenges identified in each ERE reports were grouped into five
were selected based on three (3) criterias which act as limitations (5) elements of effective disaster management [6]. PLONG tech-
for this study. One (1) Tier 1 ERE report was selected from each nical standards [4], [5] and documents that govern disaster man-
of five (5) PLONG plants, while one (1) Tier 1 ERE report was agement in Malaysia [11] were used to validate these findings.
selected based from five (5) selected Gas Transmission (GT) Furthermore, by utilizing face validity method, these results are
which located within Malaysia regions namely southern, northern, then discussed and verified by five (5) emergency management
central, western and eastern regions. Reports for Tier 1 ERE are experts consisting of professionals from industries and officers
selected based on the criticality (highest number) of challenges from lead responding agencies in Malaysia.
identified. This proves to be advantageous as it represents the
overall facility in Malaysia and covers all five (5) regions as stated
earlier. Furthermore, the remaining six (6) Tier 2 and Tier 3 ERE
3. Results and Discussion
reports were selected in fulfilling these study objectives as both
tiers activated their emergency management team. Three-tiered response established by Public listed oil and gas
(PLONG) company is Tier 1, where emergency situations are
Understanding and evaluating ERE reports requires a systemat- within the control and capability of the organization; Tier 2 is
ic approach for reviewing documents, both printed and electronic defined as tier 1 except for the involvement of external assistance
materials, hence document analysis method [9], [10]. The chal- from response agencies and authorities, and; Tier 3 is a situation
lenges identified within all ERE documents are divided into five where the emergency response is beyond the control and capabil-
(5) elements of effective emergency management namely com- ity of the organization in which the crisis requires involvement
mand structure, planning and information management, communi- and management of external response agencies or authorities as
cation, situation awareness and resources and logistics. These will listed in MNSC 20 [3], [4]. From 16 ERE reports, a total of 128
produce a total challenges for each element. Results were validat- challenges were identified.
ed using content validity method which is defined as validation of
Figure 1: Total of challenges during ERE based on tiers
Figure 1 shows that although only six (6) Tier 2 and Tier 3 ERE tively. In addition to this, Tier 3 ERE reports as analyzed in Figure
reports were used in this study, the percentage of challenges iden- 4 also shows that there are challenges identified at all five (5)
tified exceeds ten (10) Tier 1 ERE reports. This shows that with elements of effective emergency management [6], [7] where,
the increasing level of disasters (Tiers), percentages of challenges command structure contributes to 46% of total challenges identi-
are also increased as analyzed in Figure 1. In overall, Tier 3 ERE fied, 20% for resources and logistics, 16% for communication,
reports contribute up to 44% of overall challenges identified com- 14% for situation awareness and 4% for planning and information
paring to 36% of Tier 2 ERE and 20% of Tier 1 ERE. management. During Tier 2 and Tier 3 ERE, there are numbers of
challenges identified for planning and information management
Detailed studies of each tier’s ERE report found that, in Tier 1 were due to the involvement of emergency management team and
ERE reports as identified in Figure 2, command structure contrib- crisis management team in managing the overall emergency [4].
utes to 27% of total challenges identified, 0% for planning and
information management, 23% for communication, 12% for situa- 3.1 The Role of Human Factors in Effective Emergency
tion awareness and 38% for resources and logistics. This data Management
implies that there are no planning and information management
challenges during Tier 1 ERE due to the reason of the emergency Analysis of the results indicates a significant trend on the influ-
response team activated within the facility did not engage much in ence of human factors in the identified challenges. The researchers
planning information management [4]. found that the higher the needs of human involvements in ele-
ments of effective emergency management, the higher the number
Tier 2 ERE reports in Figure 3 shows that command structure of challenges identified. Tier 1 and Tier 2 emergency response
contributes to 33% for resources and logistics, 24% from the exercise (ERE) challenges represented by Figure 2 and Figure 3,
command structure, 22% for communication, 11% for both situa-
tion awareness and planning and information management respec-
492 International Journal of Engineering & Technology
shows that there are increasing percentages of challenges with the Compared to Figure 2 and Figure 3, there are some changes at two
increasing number of human factors. final elements namely resources and logistics, and command
structure in Figure 4. this is due to the reason that during Tier 1
and Tier 2 ERE, roles and responsibility of management team are
based on pre-defined roles and responsibility with the very mini-
mum involvement of outside agency [4].
Figure 2: Types of challenges based on Tier 1 ERE
This is supported by challenges identified in both ERE reports
where it is found that percentage of challenges increase from the
elements of planning and information management; situation Figure 4: Types of challenges based on Tier 3 ERE
awareness; communications; command and control; to resources
and logistics. Comparing to Tier 3 ERE, the Involvement of multi-agency from
outside contributes to the increasing percentage of challenges in
the elements of command structure.
Figure 3: Types of challenges based on Tier 2 ERE
Figure 5: Types of challenges based on all three (3) tiers ERE
Figure 5 summarizes the whole results of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 be done in understanding the role of human factors towards effec-
ERE challenges. It is found that there are increasing trends from tive emergency management, as these studies limits only to identi-
elements of planning and information management; situation fy challenges. These challenges can be detailed out even further to
awareness; communications; resources and logistics; to command understand the role of human factor in effective emergency man-
and control. These increasing trends also show the influence of agement.
human involvements in each element of effective emergency man-
agement. With 34% of challenges identified in the elements of Acknowledgement
organization structure, the researchers’ is in the opinion that the
more the involvement and contribution of humans during any
emergency response and management, the more challenges it is in We would like to thank Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM),
managing emergency effectively. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Research Management Insti-
tute for the financial support of this research under the grant 600-
IRMI/MYRA 5/3/LESTARI (0003/2016).
4. Conclusion References
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International Journal of Engineering & Technology 493
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