The last couple of weeks have not felt particularly productive. The UK has sweltered under successive heatwaves, and hunter-gathering ice cream and cold drinks have been the ceiling of my energy level and ambition.
This is more a short proof-of-life post - I have a number of long-form articles in development, but research priorities and conferences mean they remain in draft status for the moment.
I was in London last Friday supporting the Sustainability Futures Science Festival at UCL - helping Year 10–12 students consider what a career in science might actually look like – discussing academic interests, aptitudes and subject choices as well as running tabletop exercises on disaster preparedness.
Decision-making under pressure is revealing at any age, and the go-bag simulation revealed some interesting insights. Tellingly, only a single teenager picked the toothbrush and very few people considered a bag as necessary to carry items in.
There is a large body of research on emergency response, but Leach (2004) undertook research into cognitive paralysis in emergencies, and his work offers that inaction is not from fear but from failure to retrieve a behavioural template. The value of the go-bag simulation is rooted not in the contents of the bag but in the rehearsal that provides the behavioural template when faced with an emergency scenario such as flood or wildfire evacuation.
I built a lightweight virtual version of the simulation exercise on the train home. If you're interested, you can test your decision-making against the clock: Go Bag Proof of Concept. It's intended as a thought exercise rather than being an exhaustive decision tool, and there are no wrong answers. I may expand it and make the interface skeuomorphic, but it's a proof of concept. Feedback and questions welcome.
