Organizing Multidisciplinary Learning in Emergency Planning and Crisis Management (test case 1). Work package 5 Deliverable (5.1.1)

INTRODUCTION
This report is the very first analysis of a recent action research developed in Belgium in the sector of
“emergency planning and crisis management”, as a part of PSI-CO. The presentation will focus on the
analysis of some of the most significant steps andd achievements to demonstrate the power of pragmatist intervention in policy innovation (Hajer & Wagenaar 2003). Pragmatist approaches to PSI (public sector innovation) is best engaged through research-action, which gives the possibility of organizing concrete activities engaging the actors themselves, in line with the “living lab” methodology.
The main issue in this project was to achieve cooperation between the groups of professionals involved in crisis management: they are affiliated to different organizations and they have to cover specific missions (disciplines) designed as: firemen, medical intervention, police, civil protection, communication. The objective of the intervention was to help these professionals develop a process for multidisciplinary debriefing and learning from experience. The intervention was organized first to help them develop together a shared understanding of what “learning from experience” means in each discipline and between disciplines. In a second step, the researchers invited the participants to define with them the new processes and procedures to be implemented in order to favor this “learning for experience”. The fieldwork was organized to “follow the actors and the objects”, with an interpretative methodology for analyzing framings, boundaries, institutional discourses, actors identities and relations. It also allowed us to understand how these change and develop over time during the activities which were proposed to help develop a creative design supporting “learning from experience in a multidisciplinary setting in EP&CM”.