Organisational capability of agile response to crises

Abstract

Aviation is a highly inter-connected system of systems. This means that a problem in one area may cause effects in other countries or parts of the Air Transport System (ATS). For example, a fire at a major hub can cause disruptions to air traffic in a large part of Europe. Additionally, there is the potential for massive system-wide disruptions such as occurred during the volcanic ash crisis in 2010. What is needed in ATS crisis situations is not only rapid coordination, but an agile response. This research provides aviation organisations with Agile Response Capability (ARC) guidance material, to help organisations set up, exercise, and evaluate adaptive and flexible organisational structures for handling disturbances and crises, and pro-actively and retrospectively analyse actual events.

Agility, like resilience, refers to the ability to cope with dynamics and complexity in a flexible manner, by adjusting and adapting performance and the organization of work to better fit changing demands, both pro-actively as a way of preventing unwanted outcomes, and re-actively as a way of coping with, and understanding, unwanted events. The ARC approach consists of the ARC Method for EXercise planning (ARC-MEX) to aid staff responsible for the planning and analysis of crisis exercises, and the ARC Crisis Operations and Plan Enhancement (ARC-COPE) aimed at staff responsible for developing preparedness or crisis plans and analysing past events. The method is available on the project websites