ABSTRACT
A responsibility model shows how responsibilities are assigned to agents and what resources are needed to discharge those responsibilities. Diffusion of responsibility can occur in multi-agency environments when each agency may believe that one of the other agencies has been assigned a particular responsibility. The chapter shows how responsibility modelling can be used to identify vulnerabilities in contingency plans, before discussing its role in informing the design of table-top exercise scenarios, and shaping the nature of live table-top exercises as they evolve. Managing the different types of responsibility vulnerabilities may not always be straightforward. The chapter concludes by summarising how performing vulnerability analyses can help improve emergency preparedness. Emergency preparedness is recognised as the best defence to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks. Emergency situations are characterised by disparate types of dynamically changing information that has to be managed and distributed to widely dispersed users.
