Navigating the chaos: Capturing and catalysing team coordination in crisis situations using a multimodal approach
This topic is suitable for those with an interest in Disaster Risk Management, human behavior, and decision-making. During crisis events, people are under a lot of stress which influences their decision-making. How exactly that influence is changing decisions is still unclear.
Emergency response teams, such as police officers, firefighters, and medical teams, operate in highly dynamic and stressful situations where effective coordination can make the difference between success and failure. Under intense pressure, stress can impair attention, decision-making, and communication, increasing the risk of coordination breakdowns that may endanger both responders and civilians.
Current training programs often focus on technical skills or standardized communication protocols. While important, these approaches offer limited insight into how coordination actually unfolds moment by moment under stress, or why teams sometimes adapt effectively and at other times descend into chaos. This research project addresses that gap by studying team coordination as a dynamic, time-sensitive process that emerges through interaction, behavior, and physiological stress responses. In doing so, the project focuses on capturing real-time coordination processes during high-stress crisis scenarios in firefighter and police teams using a multi-channel approach that integrates video-recorded and coded team behavior with physiological stress data (HRV, using the Zephyr Bioharness). It aims to uncover how teams maintain, lose, or regain coordination during critical moments, and how this can be trained more effectively.
We have collaborations with the Dutch firefighters and the Police Academy, where data collection will start in March 2026. This is a unique opportunity to work hand in hand with the safety regions that are responsible for Disaster Risk Management in the Netherlands.
The main objectives of this master’s research are to:
- Examine how team coordination patterns evolve over time during high-stress crisis situations.
- Identify critical moments where coordination stabilizes, adapts, or breaks down under pressure.
- Explore how stress responses (e.g., physiological arousal and synchrony) relate to coordination behavior.
- Translate empirical insights into practical implications for training and team reflection for the Dutch Firefighters/Police Academy.
The methodology combines video observational and multimodal data analysis. Students will analyse video recordings of realistic crisis simulations involving emergency response teams. Coordination behaviors (such as communication patterns, turn-taking, and action sequences) will be systematically coded and analyzed using specialized software. These behavioral data will be linked to physiological measures of stress (e.g., heart rate variability) collected during the same scenarios. Students can use use real time monitoring techniques and geospatial analysis of the crisis event and create a platform so present the links between decisions, stress and crisis events.
The project may include quantitative analyses of coordination and stress dynamics over time (e.g., Multidimensional Recurrence Quantification Analysis (MdRQA), multimodal entropy, or t-pattern analysis, depending on students' interests and research questions), however more qualitative video-based reflection methods, or a mixed-methods approach are also possible.
The work contributes to both the theory on team coordination under stress and the development of evidence-based feedback tools for crisis training.
For questions regarding the project, please first contact Marcella Hoogeboom at: a.m.g.m.hoogeboom@utwente.nl
- Endedijk, M. D., Hoogeboom, A. M. G. M., Groenier, M., de Laat, S., & Van Sas, J. (2018). Using sensor technology to capture the structure and content of team interactions in medical emergency teams during stressful moments. Frontline Learning Research, 6, 123-147
- David, L.Z. Hoogeboom, A.M.G.M., Endedijk, M.D. & Schraagen, J.M. (2024) Using a digital data analytic tool to capture dynamic change in coordination patterns: an exploratory study of the Apollo 13 mission. Applied Ergonomics, 121.