Respond to emergencies to provide assistance
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The documentation around care is highly automatable and that is where the time goes back. The care itself needs physical presence and someone accountable for the outcome, so this work stays where it is.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Direct care and assistance |
| Jobs that do it | 13 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents |
| O*NET activity | Assisting and Caring for Others (4.A.4.a.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 13 occupations that perform it.
- Respond to medical emergencies, bomb threats, fire alarms, or intrusion alarms, following emergency response procedures.
- Implement operational and emergency procedures.
- Respond to emergency situations on an on-call basis.
- Provide initial response to abnormal events or to alarms from radiation monitoring equipment.
- Perform crisis interventions to help ensure the safety of the patients and others.
- Respond to emergency situations, such as emergency medical calls, security calls, or fire alarms.
- Respond to emergencies, such as escapes.
- Respond to fire alarms and other calls for assistance, such as automobile and industrial accidents.
- Perform emergency work during off-hours.
- Provide for public safety by maintaining order, responding to emergencies, protecting people and property, enforcing motor vehicle and criminal laws, and promoting good community relations.
- Answer alarms and investigate disturbances.
- Respond to critical incidents, such as catastrophic events, violent weather, or civil disorders.
- Perform activities related to underwater search and rescue, salvage, recovery, or cleanup operations.
- Patrol specific area on foot, horseback, or motorized conveyance, responding promptly to calls for assistance.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing for the care itself. The time comes back from the documentation around it, so the stack worth building is the recording one, on the pages for that work.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
Who does this work
13 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Commercial Divers
- Firefighters
- First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Mental Health Counselors
- Nuclear Monitoring Technicians
- Orderlies
- Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers
- Police Identification and Records Officers
- Retail Loss Prevention Specialists
- Security Guards
- Security Management Specialists
- Security Managers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Intervene in crisis situations or emergencies”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Assist others during emergencies | 7 |
| Rescue people from hazardous situations | 5 |
| Respond to transportation emergencies | 3 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.