Hazard Warning Systems: Review of 20 Years of Progress

Abstract

The United States has no comprehensive national warning strategy that covers all hazards in all places. Instead, public warning practices are decentralized across different governments and the private sector. Uneven preparedness to issue warnings exists across local communities; hence, people are unevenly protected from the surprise onset of natural disasters. Without changes in this situation, inequalities will grow larger, and the gains made in saving lives over the past decades may well be reversed. Since the first assessment of research on natural hazards was completed in 1975, there have been significant improvements in forecasts and warnings for some hazards but only marginal improvements for others. Forecasts for floods, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions have improved most significantly, and public dissemination of warnings has improved the most for hurricanes. However, a 100% reliable warning system does not exist for any hazard. TABLE 1. Improvements in Prediction, Forecast, and Warning Integration Hazard (1) Prediction/forecast (2) Warning integration (3)

Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication as an Integrative Model

“…Crisis communication also has begun to draw more heavily on the need to communicate during public emergencies, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and so on (Auf Der Heide, 1989;. This may involve disseminating information about evacuations, about harm mitigation resources and procedures, and about possibilities of additional harm (see Mileti & Sorensen, 1990;Sorensen, 2000). Emergency public information, most often associated with natural disasters, is designed to ''protect health, safety, and the environment 46 B. Reynolds and M. W. Seeger by keeping the public informed'' and ''to restore public confidence in the organization's ability to manage an incident'' (Mileti & Sorensen, 1990, p. 4).…”

The social impacts of the heat–health watch/warning system in Phoenix, Arizona: assessing the perceived risk and response of the public

“…Sorensen (2000) documents these improvements for numerous warning systems (heat is not included) over a 20-year span beginning in the late 1970s. He suggests that there have been "major" improvements in hurricane forecasts and the integration of these forecasts into warnings.…”

“…However, this pattern seems to be reversed when it comes to heat; both the public and the scientific community have a consistent pattern of under representing the actual impacts of heat. For example, in a recent article specifically about the progress of natural disaster warning systems across the United States, Sorensen (2000) examines 12 disaster warning systems. Surprisingly, heat is not among them despite the fact that it has been shown to be the leading weather-related killer in the United States (Sheridan and Kalkstein 2004).…”

The Communication and Risk Management of Volcanic Ballistic Hazards

“…Best practice suggests the use of multiple sources to disseminate hazard and risk information as preferred forms of media accessed for information vary (Sorensen 2000;Mileti et al 2004;Haynes et al 2007;Bird et al 2010). The public's response to volcanic hazard communication is influenced by the content and attractiveness of the message (which should include a description of the hazard, its impacts, hazard extent, and advice on what to do and when), how comprehensible it is, and the frequency and number of channels the message is received from, as well as the extent of public belief that safety actions are possible and will be effective (Leonard et al 2008;Sorensen 2013 (Fig.…”