Over the past years, Incident Management (IM) has been introduced into the Netherlands. The evaluation of the tested measures focused on measuring the duration of the several incident phases. This involved collecting a large amount of data. Although the evaluations resulted in important figures for assessing IM, there were some drawbacks as well. Collecting the data was expensive, and the data set often turned out to be incomplete. The aim of this study was therefore to develop a less expensive, less data-intensive, but still reliable evaluation method. The method developed distinguishes three evaluation levels: local (concerning a specific measure), regional, and generic (national). The method is structured, according to: (1) a number of aspects: organisational/communicative, technical, legislative, and costs; and (2) according to effects of IM measures: safety of emergency services, victims and road users, handling speed, consequences for the investigation into the incident cause, the quality of information dissemination to the public, and delays. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, surveys and group meetings with stakeholders in the IM process, generate a large part of the data for the evaluation. Additionally, durations will still be measured, but less extensively than before. Several important figures describing the efficiency and effectiveness of IM, can be collected from existing data sources with considerably smaller efforts.
Abstract