In China, many disaster rescue operations need cooperation between civil forces and military forces. Understanding the key elements of civil-military disaster rescue operations is a basic problem faced by Chinese rescuers and scholars.

To summarize the key elements of civil-military disaster rescue operations in China.

On July 17, 2016, an expert round-table meeting was held on our campus to discuss some basic problems in disaster research. The participants arrived at a consensus that the key elements of civil-military disaster rescue operation under Chinese cultural context should be carefully analyzed using Six Sigma (Why, Who, What, When, Where, and How, 5W1H)

The minutes of the meeting was summarized into a brief report.

(1) Why to rescue - it is the responsibility of modern government to protect its people; (2) Who are the rescuers - individuals or groups with passion and ability to do such work, but they should be organized properly; (3) What to do - make vital systems of the community run normally as soon as possible; (4) When to rescue - different disasters have different laws, but it is better to render help in the golden hour; (5) Where to rescue - it depends on the input process (material, human resources, etc.) and output process (patients, waste material, etc.) of the rescue operation, not merely confined to the disaster site; (6) How to rescue - cooperation among all branches of social sectors is vital to succeed, especially civil-military cooperation. Military force is the backbone force in an austere environment.

The discipline of disaster medicine is developing rapidly in China. The research and evaluation framework should be established carefully. Civil forces and military forces should have an identical understanding of the same question. This abstract is only part of the research framework.