The Research Management Committee is responsible for several projects in team building at the University. An

emergency meeting has been called because of a crisis in one of the projects for which you are responsible.

The project is studying teams under stressful conditions in a remote part of Perthshire. The experiment involves

six $(6)$ volunteers living underground in a cave system for fourteen days. The team's only connection to the

outside world is a telephone link to the research station at the entrance to the cave. A call for help has been

received from the volunteers. Access to the cave has been blocked by a major fall of rock and their only way out

is now through a very long and arduous cave system subject to flooding.

The local cave rescue team reports that it will be extremely difficult to get them out because the only route into

the cave where the team are living is very narrow and when flooded it will only be possible to get one person

out each hour. In the circumstances of continuing heavy rain fall it is probable that the rapidly rising water will

mean that the rescuers will not be able to bring all of the volunteers to safety before the water completely

floods their cave.

Through their link to the research station, the volunteers have been made aware of the seriousness of their

situation. They have said that they are unwilling to decide on the sequence by which they will be rescued. The

responsibility for making this decision now rests with the