Nuclear Emergency Management In Europe A Review of Approaches to Decision Making

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Nuclear Emergency Management In EuropeA Review
of Approaches to Decision Making

• Emma Carter and Simon French
• simon.french_at_mbs.ac.uk

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The Evatech Project

• Many collaborators
• EU funded
• Main factual paper tomorrow
• or read the paper in the proceedings
• Today focus on one or two discussion points

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Basic Research Questions

• To indicate a broadly applicable method of
  representing emergency management processes
  
• To use this to indicate the differences and
  similarities between processes in four European
  countries (UK, Slovakia, Germany, Belgium)
  
• To draw some general conclusions about the form
  or emergency management processes
  
• To draw some general conclusions about
  information provision and decision support

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Or

• Does one size fit all?
• Because the thinking between much of nuclear
  emergency DSS design is that it does.

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The UK Process
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The Slovakian Process
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The Belgian Process
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The German Process
Note that the actual process may vary from
Länder to Länder so there is no single German
model
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Who does the DSS support?

• in all cases, the technical experts
• decision makers are informed by the experts
• does this build a shared understanding
• do the groups of experts share their
  understandings
  
• e.g. health physicists and social sciences
• potential for misinterpretation

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Communication

• Within emergency management process
• well supported
• With the public
• importance recognised
• but little support from DSS

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Conflicting model output

• Solution 1 (UK and Slovakia)
• Discuss between experts
• Slow, might be indecisive
• But does recognise the uncertainty
• Solution 2 (Germany and Belgium)
• Limit the number of models
• e.g. to 1
• reduces risk of indecision
• but risks false certainty

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Risk analysis of EM process

• Are the processes designed with the expectation
  that nothing in the process will go wrong?
  
• what happens if it does
• risk of confusion and loss of public trust

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What did we get wrong?

• Used process modelling
• ? rational view of the process
• Maybe should have used soft modelling and rich
  picture diagrams

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Rich picture diagram of hole in the ozone layer
issues as perceived in 1988
From Daellenbach (1994)
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Does one size fit all?

• In the case of socks
• not if you are a hobbit
• and it was the hobbits who won through in a minor
  crisis for Middle Earth
  
• In the case of nuclear emergency management
• balance of rationality vs culture/history/politics
  
  
• but are we truly asking where that balance lies?