The scene phase of disaster victim identification (DVI): Lessons learned from deployments, training, and police and defence force collaborative exercises

• Responses to mass fatality disasters may require military and police collaboration. • Effective scene examination (Phase 1) is complex and requires preparation. • We review lessons learned from deployments, training and collaborative exercises. • Valuable but limited research is available on Phase 1 preparation and collaboration. • We develop a proposed research agenda for military and police Phase 1 preparation. The scene examination, or Phase 1, is the recovery phase of the disaster victim identification (DVI) process, which involves the systematic recording, documentation and retrieval of the bodies of the dead following a mass disaster incident. A wide range of government and non-government organisations and volunteers can be involved in this phase of the DVI process. The need for collaboration between organisations, such as police and defence forces, in managing the aftermath of disasters has been increasingly recognised. Yet it is unclear whether, how, and to what extent practitioners are prepared through joint training and exercises for their roles in scene examination. This paper presents a review of the literature on collaboration across organisations in preparing for disaster incidents. It explores the findings from research and practitioner-oriented literature on the lessons learned from international DVI deployments, training initiatives, and collaborative DVI exercises. It identifies gaps in existing research to inform a research agenda on collaboration in the preparation for disasters among Australian and New Zealand police and defence force personnel.