The Cave Rescue Phenomenon

Please read the case and the details carefully:

You are a member of a team of people who comprise a Research Management

Committee. The committee is at present responsible for funding projects related to study
of human behavior in confined spaces. As part of one of your projects, you had sent six
volunteers to a cave system in a remote part of the country to spend four days
underground. They were connected to the rest of the world only by a radio link to the
research hut set up at the cave entrance.

On the second day of their confined stay, incessant rain has led to rising water levels
inside the cave and rocks have started falling. As this has trapped all the six volunteers
inside, you all are in an emergency meeting. The only Rescue Team available there has
told you that rescue will be extremely difficult and only one person can be brought out
each hour with equipment at their disposal, which means leaving some others to perish in
the process.

The volunteers know their plight, but have declined taking a decision. So the Research
Management Committee needs to advice the rescue team on the order for rescuing the
volunteers by completing a ranking sheet based on the information available about the
volunteers in their project files. The accompanying sheet carries the information on
the volunteers. From the information available, the Committee members are allowed to
select candidates to rescue in order of preferences based on a criterion chosen by them.
EXERCISE:

1. Analyse the situation, identify the problem, decide on your criteria and then
decide on the first option among the six volunteers to be rescued on a priority
basis. The Rescue Team can save them as per your ranking in the list one after
the other, and there is going to be media frenzy about who was chosen over
whom. Therefore, you need to have defined criteria for saving the volunteers in
the order you have selected and you should be able to defend your selected option
against the criteria.