last week, I finished reading Asfalt by Roy Heiliegers in which professionals from across the Incident Management chain share their experiences from the front line.
The stories are diverse. Some are impressive, some emotional, and some confronting. Yet while reading them, something stood out.
Reading these stories felt less like discovering something new and more like seeing long-established principles confirmed by the people who deal with incidents every day.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, the professionals in Asfalt repeatedly demonstrate that Incident Management revolves around four fundamental questions:
What happened?
Where did it happen?
When did it happen?
Who is involved?
These questions do not simply describe an incident.
They describe the essence of Incident Management.
What struck me most was that these are the same principles I have applied since the early conception of the Incident Management systems I have been involved with.
Not because they originated from a software design.
Not because they came from a data model.
But because they reflect how the operational world actually works.
The What determines the nature of the response.
A vehicle breakdown requires a different approach than a collision, a vehicle fire or debris on the road.
The When determines urgency and impact.
The same incident can have completely different consequences depending on whether it occurs during the morning rush hour or in the middle of the night.
The Who identifies the organisations, responders and road users that are involved or affected.
And the Where provides context.
In fact, I have always considered the spatial component to be one of the most important dimensions of Incident Management.
Many IT systems treat location as a coordinate.
Incident Management treats location as meaning.
A coordinate tells you where something is.
A road network tells you what that location means.
The location of an incident often reveals which road authority is responsible, which traffic control centre is involved, which emergency services cover the area, which operational measures are available and which road users may be affected.
In many cases, the answer to Who is already hidden inside Where.
That is the difference between data and semantics.
And perhaps that is why I have always struggled with the idea that Incident Management is little more than a logging problem.
Last year, someone in a decision-making position suggested that Incident Management was essentially a simple logging tool.
After all, incidents are reported, updated, assigned and eventually closed.
What could be more than that?
Looking back, I believe that view underestimates the complexity of the domain.
Recording facts is relatively easy.
Understanding their operational significance is where the real challenge begins.
A stranded vehicle.
On a motorway.
During the morning rush hour.
Within the responsibility area of a specific traffic control centre.
These are individual facts. Together, they create operational meaning.
This observation also connects to something I have written about before: the importance of semantics.
Data tells us what exists. Semantics tell us what it means.
And in operational domains such as Incident Management, meaning is everything.
Technology changes.
Systems change.
Organisations change.
Yet after more than 25 years in Incident Management, I am convinced that every meaningful operational decision still starts with four simple questions:
What, Where, When, Who.
The stories may change. The principles do not.