Modelling of fire managers’ decision making method

Abstract

During fighting against forest fires the situation can change quickly, thus, managers must also be ready to change the strategy and tactic. Firefighting managers have a typical profession, during which – depending on the time – making both analytical and naturalistic decision. Trainings usually focus on traditional – analytical based – decision making, which takes time, however, in many cases there is not enough time to do that. Therefore managers make many times recognition-primed decisions as a symbol of naturalistic decision-making. The first part of this article gives a thorough review of the topic. The second shows a simple and a complex model, created by the author. Method: the author used different tools and methods to achieve his goals; one of them was the study of the relevant literature, the other one was his own experience as a firefighting manager. Other results come from two surveys that are referred to; 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.