Description
2025 ASEM 620 Capstone Project
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Publisher
University of Alabama at Birmingham
City
Birmingham, AL
Keywords
safety engineering, risk, risk perception, risk acceptance, risk compensation, normalization of risk, self-efficacy
Disciplines
Engineering
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
St Martin, Terill A., "Understanding Risk for Industrial Emergency Response Teams" (2025). ASEM Capstones. 8.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/asem/8
Comments
Industrial emergency response teams provide an important role in the protection of employees and other important assets for a company during a fire, chemical release, or other catastrophic emergencies. There are high levels of risk that need to be accepted in order to successfully complete the mission of responding and ending the emergency. Responders face many hazards that can result in serious injury or death. Despite the level of risk faced by responders, there are many benefits in having an on-site emergency response team. We will explore the risks that may be associated with and encountered by the people that are tasked with responding to incidents, and the differences between voluntary risk versus involuntary risk. This paper will examine the perceptions, acceptances, compensations, and the normalization of risk. Self-efficacy and risk management should be understood in order to keep our emergency response members as safe as possible during high-risk activities.