The challenges of decision-making in emergency management, the cognitive aids people use and the decision-making training they receive.

Emergency management is a complex socio-technical system in which people operate in hierarchies of teams (Bearman et al. 2023). At the heart of this system are people making decisions to achieve the best outcomes possible for the community. In this context, decisions are made by individuals and teams based on their situational awareness and goals derived from organisational doctrine, training, norms and values. This is underpinned by cognitive functions of perception, attention, memory and language. Decisions must be executed by enacting or communicating a plan to others and monitored using feed-forward and feedback information. This article introduces 3 literature review papers that together examine the current practice, training and challenges of decision making in emergency management.