Emergency management training: Making sense of rich qualitative data

Content analyses with the assistance of computers date back over 50 years and allow analysis of unstructured text by looking at concepts and expressions used. Emergency management training also has a long history of using computerized tools to enhance the training process. This paper presents an analysis of rich qualitative data from a web based crisis management training tool used with emergency response personnel in the mountainous border region between Norway and Sweden. Using the NVivo software package the paper demonstrates the efficiency of handling rich sources of textual communications between police, fire and ambulance teams communicating with representatives of power companies and county and municipality officials in responding to emergencies. The analysis shows distinct patterns of concepts and terms used by the various emergency response agencies in the two native languages. In order to compare the concepts and terms used on agencies on both sides of the border it was necessary to provide a translation of the transcripts to English of the two police agencies to illustrate differences across the border.