ReSC | Mass Casualty Plans for a Resilient Health and Social Care System: What Risks and Impacts do Planners Consider

Project Dates: June 2025 – March 2026

ReSC (Mass Casualty Plans for a Resilient Health and Social Care System) is one of seven projects funded from more than 140 submissions to UKRI’s SALIENT Hub Devolved Funding scheme for 2025. The scheme supports innovative, cross-sectoral research aimed at strengthening national preparedness and resilience. ReSC has been awarded £80,000 to support this 10-month programme of research and engagement.

The project is co-led by the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR) at Durham University (Prof Bruce Malamud; IHRR; Prof Alex Densmore, Geography), and Kate Cochrane (Head of Resilience for NHS Highland and IHRR Professor in Practice), with the ideas and practitioner focus of the research developed through her system-level resilience and preparedness work.

ReSC explores how people across the health and social care system in the UK bring different perspectives to the planning and response for mass casualty incidents, by:

• Identifying how planners perceive and prioritise complex and overlapping hazards.
• Exploring how real-world system pressures  including hospital discharge delays, ambulance response times, and workforce constraints shape planning decisions and their effectiveness.
• Exploring the often-overlooked roles of social care providers, voluntary organisations, and services for children and young people.

Mass casualty incidents, such as major transport accidents, large-scale fires, or terrorist attacks, can quickly overwhelm local capacity. It is difficult to fully reflect the cascading impacts and complex dynamics of such events in existing planning exercises. ReSC addresses these gaps through a multi-hazard approach, generating practical insights into how mass casualty plans are designed, tested, and improved in different UK contexts.

Key activities include:

• Exploring how locality-specific plans are developed and operationalised
• Analysis of 5–6 post-incident debriefs and relevant international case studies (e.g. wildfires in Victoria, Australia)
• Two virtual stakeholder workshops and one in-person co-production workshop
• 8–10 interviews with NHS specialists across the UK

By supporting practitioners to visualise and explore the mental models they use in emergency planning, ReSC will inform the development of plans that are operationally relevant and usable under pressure. These findings will support improved training, help explore alignment between strategic priorities and the realities of front-line delivery and strengthen shared understanding across the system.

About the devolved funders SALIENT.

The SALIENT group (Security and Lifeline Infrastructure, Environment and Nature Together), led by Dr Richard Kirkham, Deputy Director of the Thomas Ashton Institute for Risk and Regulatory Research, is a major UK research programme supporting national security and resilience. Funded through UK Research and Innovation’s Building a Secure and Resilient World strategic theme, SALIENT brings together academics from the University of Manchester, alongside partners at the universities of Bath, Exeter, and Sussex. This ambitious five-year investment aims to catalyse, convene, and conduct cross-disciplinary research that informs UK resilience policy and practice. By fostering strong relationships across central and local government, devolved administrations, and the wider public, SALIENT serves as a key platform for driving forward innovation in national preparedness and infrastructure resilience.

For further information:

Announcing the 7 projects funded through the first SALIENT Devolved Funding Call! - SALIENT