Emergency Alert and Warning Systems Current Knowledge and Future Research Directions (2018) / Chapter Skim
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1 Understanding Public Response to Alerts and Warnings
1 Understanding Public Response to Alerts and Warnings
Pages 18-44
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that explored public response in the context of Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system and other emerging technologies.1 The research summarized in this chapter is only a subset of a large body of work done on emergency alerts and warnings.
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It then turns to how message content, message context, and message receiver characteristics can also impact PAI. The key PAI question is "What delays people from taking a protective action upon receipt of a first alert/warning or observation of environmental or social cues?
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Mack and G Baker, 1961, The Occasion Instant: The Structure of Social Responses to Repeated Air Raid Warnings, Disaster Study No.
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Lindell and R Perry, 2012, The Protective Action Decision Model: Theoretical modifications and additional evidence, Risk Analysis 32(4)
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Message Characteristics Influencing Protective Action Initiation Times Decades of work has identified that a variety of message characteristics -- including content, style, length, delivery, and type of recommended protective action -- influence public response.
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Fitzpatrick, 1991, The causal sequence of risk communication in the Parkfield Earthquake Prediction Experiment, Risk Analysis 12(3)
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Tokuhata, and C Flynn, 1984, The Protective Action Decision Model applied to evacuation during the Three Mile Island crisis, International Journal of Mass Emergency and Disasters 2(1)
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, Milano, Italy: Franco Angeli.; R Stallings,1984, Evacuation behavior at Three Mile Island, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 2:11-26.
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. In the study, participants were more predisposed to share WEA messages or disaster tweets on Twitter expressing a dismissive sentiment about floods more than the other types of hazards, although overall, all subjects were highly responsive to the disaster messages and shared them a majority of the time.23 The study also found that subjects have different responses to different hazard types based on their perceived amount of danger or damage associated with that disaster, for example, on a psychological level,24 subjects perceive the threat posed by a flash flood differently than the other hazards in the study both while reading alerts about floods and when they were about to watch a video concerning floods.25 Context Characteristics Influencing Protective Action Initiation Times Research shows that there are environmental and social cues that influence how people interpret alerts and warnings, which in turn, influences their PAI times.
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okuhata, and T C Flynn, 1984, The Protective Action Decision Model applied to evacuation during the Three-Mile Island crisis, International Journal of Mass Emergency and Disasters 2(1)
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Stallings,1984, Evacuation behavior at Three Mile Island, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 2:11-26; Y Yamamoto and E
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play major roles relative to other message elements in the outcomes of public understanding and belief of the protective action recommendation and the ability to decide how to respond. Importantly, the START research team found that WEA messages would be more effective if they were to state how much time remains until impact rather than use time to indicate when the message expires, as is the current practice.
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In other cases, people may end up receiving forwarded messages intended for different zones that may call for the wrong protective action. For example, someone 40 Federal Communications Commission, "FCC Strengthens Wireless Emergency Alerts as a Public Safety Tool," release date September 29, 2016, https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/ attachmatch/DOC-341504A1.pdf.
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47 D Gonzales, 2016, Geo-Targeting Performance of Wireless Emergency Alerts in Imminent Threat Scenarios – Volume 1: Tornado Warnings, Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security.
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49 Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council V (CSRIC V) , Working Group 2, Emergency Alerting Platforms, 2016, Social Media & Complementary Alerting Methods – Recommended Strategies & Best Practices: Final Report & Recommendations, Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission.
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57 Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council V (CSRIC V) , Work ing Group 2, Emergency Alerting Platforms, 2016, Social Media & Complementary Alerting Methods – Recommended Strategies & Best Practices: Final Report & Recommendations, Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission.
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Members of the public expect to be heard on social media -- i.e., for emergency officials to respond to what members of the public share on social media.58 • Though several early adopters have had some success with utilizing these platforms, the "rules for engagement" and best practices for emergency responders using social media are still evolving.59 • Social media are not geographic-specific and therefore it is difficult for responders to distinguish between their local community members and the global audience. • Emergency responders fear the spread of misinformation on these platforms, and many have reported a reluctance to adopt social media in part due to this concern.60,61 Another challenge, which suggests the need for more research, is the varied use of different social media platforms across different demographics, a problem that could create new "digital divides" in the accessibility of information if alerts are shared via social media.62 This latter point suggests an "all channels" strategy, which positions social media in general as a complementary alerting source and not a primary one, and points toward the use of many different platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat)
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Specifically, there are unexplored opportunities to utilizing social media as complementary channels for emergency alerts -- including uses related to both incoming and outgoing information. This is especially important since the research record provides strong evidence that how warning message(s)
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Palen, 2013, "Working & Sustaining the Virtual ‘Disaster Desk'," University of Washington, http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/cscw2013_final-2.pdf. 70 The CASA Dallas Forth Worth Living Lab brings together the NCTCOG, NWS, DFW Airport, Fort Worth, Grand Prairei, Midlothian, and other public safety officials, in addi ion t to bringing in the user.
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and providing information on what action, if any, they took during the event. By getting feedback from users, more information can be gathered relating to what areas are being impacted and how, and gives esearchers r the ability to gather information on how many individuals took the recommended protective action(s)
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Another study, which sampled adults aged 50 and above from the Health and Retirement Study, found that two-thirds of the study population lacked an emergency plan, had never participated in a preparedness program, and were not aware of the resources available to them.75 In addition, 15 percent of respondents reported having medical equipment that needed electricity, making them susceptible to power outages.76 An additional problem with older adults is that social isolation may prevent them from receiving warning messages or asking for help when needed, which may render them invisible to rescue teams during times of disasters.77 The problem of social isolation is compounded by differences in mobile device ownership, where a small subset of elderly individuals do not own a cell phone or they own a device that is not a smartphone (which impacts the types of messages they can receive)
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Glik, 2007, Disaster planning and risk communication with vulnerable communities: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, American Journal of Public Health 97(Suppl 1)
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Respondents in the study were also more likely to trust sirens than social media.87 Many regions in the United States have large populations for whom English is not the primary language, and the number of different languages spoken in some areas can be very large. However, even as language diversity is increasing, the use of smartphones and other technologies (e.g., Internet, broadband, tablet, and social media)
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Phillips, 1993, Cultural diversity in disasters: Sheltering, housing, and long term recovery, International Journal of Mass Emergency Disasters 11(1)
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Harrison, and C Berka, 2016, "Modeling C ognitive Response to Wireless Emergency Alerts to Inform Emergency Response Interventions," Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, https:// www.dhs.gov/sites/default/ files/publications/WEA%20-%20Modeling%20Cognitive%20Response.pdf.
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100 D Gonzales, 2016, Geo-Targeting Performance of Wireless Emergency Alerts in Imminent Threat Scenarios–Volume 1: Tornado Warnings, Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security.
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By understanding how various platforms work, including social media as previously discussed in this chapter, alert originators may be able to leverage them more effectively in times of need in order to disseminate alerts and warnings to the public. Mellon University, 2013, Best Practices in Wireless Emergency Alerts, CMU/SEI-2013-SR-015, Pittsburgh, PA; Mapping WEA Security Requirements and Guidance to Cyber ecurity Risk s Mitigation Recommendations (delivered separately to DHS - some require ents are re m stricted)
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