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ePaper created 2013-02-04, 12:04:21 | version 1.24.0
Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann Kaufmann has served as adjunct professor at the In- stitute of Sociology of the University of Freiburg since April 2012. Upon comple- tion of his studies in Freiburg and Berlin, he be- gan his academic career in 1997 at the University of Freiburg collaborative re- search center “Identities and Alterities.” After the project ended in 2002, the sociologist taught and con- ducted research at other institutions – for instance at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, on a scholarship from the German Research Founda- tion and later as a fellow at the Center for Interdisci- plinary Research in Biele- feld. Kaufmann has headed several research projects on civil security since 2007 and was involved in the es- tablishment of the Freiburg Centre for Security and Society in summer 2009. The interdisciplinary net- work addresses questions of civil security. Further Reading Blum, S./Kaufmann, S. (2012): Governing (in)security. The rise of resilience. In: Gander, H.-H./Perron, W./Poscher, R./Riescher, G./ Würtenberger, T. (Hg.): Resilienz in der offenen Gesellschaft. Symposium des Centre for Security and Society. Baden-Baden, p. 235 – 257. Ellebrecht, N./Latasch, L. (2012): Vorsichtung durch Rettungsassistenten auf der Großübung SOGRO MANV 500. Eine vergleichende Analyse der Fehleinstufungen. In: Notfall und Rettungsmedizin 1, p. 58 – 60. Ellebrecht, N./Jenki, M. (2011): Beobachten – Filmen – Befragen: Soziologische Technik- und Organisationsforschung bei Notfallübungen. In: Im Einsatz 4/2011, p. 20 – 25. injured among nearby hospitals. The rescue co- ordination center can compare the data on the victims to the capacities of hospitals in the sur- rounding area directly from the scene of the ac- cident. “The advantage is that the hospitals continually feed information about their capaci- ties into the network,” says Kaufmann. “This al- lows the rescue teams to quickly determine where which victims can be admitted and where they can’t.” Despite these advantages for the ap- praisal of the situation and the coordination of tasks at the scene of the accident, Kaufmann views several aspects of the technology with a critical eye: “We need to bear in mind the possi- bility of an unexpected defect in the handheld computers and the danger of a broken Internet connection.” However, several aspects of previous rescue practices remain unchanged: The rescue teams still separate the victims into groups depending on how urgently they need treatment. The in- jured are given color-coded markings, red marks signifying a severe injury and green a light injury. But instead of cards providing information on in- juries, signs of life, or drugs that have already been administered, the patients will now receive armbands with a memory chip. “The chip con- tains all of the patient’s data and can be read and written on at all further transport stations and at the hospital,” explains Kaufmann. In this way, subsequent teams will be able to determine more easily how urgently the patients need to be transported to the hospital and treated. “The pre- vious procedure with cards often proved to be inefficient. In addition, the entries were some- times unreadable due to rain or hectic writing.” Kaufmann is thus in favor of the new data re- cording system. However, he also warns that “ini- tial analyses indicate that the sorting of victims is not error-free even with the help of the PDAs. For instance, the rescue teams occasionally classified uninjured persons as severely injured, which distorted the situation appraisal.” The de- Rescue crews and firefighters have already tested the handheld computers during two large-scale drills with hundreds of participants in Frankfurt. cisive factor is still qualified personnel, as Kaufmann stresses. Due to the large amount of data, precise find- ings are not expected until after the completion of SOGRO in the spring of 2013. Afterwards, Kaufmann intends to continue concentrating on questions of civil security research. In 2009, he was already involved in the establishment of the “Centre for Security and Society,” an interdisci- plinary network of jurists, sociologists, computer scientists, and scientists from further disciplines at the University of Freiburg who are planning in- novative projects in the area of civil security. “This is a field of research in which there is still a lot of work to do,” says Kaufmann. “Questions of security were largely informed by military con- cerns up until the political transformation pro- cesses of the 1990s. Now that the Cold War is over, we need to start focusing more of our ef- forts on civil security.” 11