Dennis S. Mileti

Communication of Emergency Public Warnings: A Social Science Perspective and State-of-the-Art Assessment

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Warnings During Disaster: Normalizing Communicated Risk

The theory of risk communication was tested with data on public perception of risk and response to aftershock warnings during the post-impact Loma Prieta earthquake emergency. Findings from samples of households in Santa Cruz and San Francisco Counties were consistent, confirm established propositions, and suggest theoretical refinement. It was concluded that the social psychological process which explains post-impact public warning response is not identical to the one which explains public response to pre-impact warnings. The lack of mainshock damage created a “normalization bias” for non-victims. This bias constrained perception of risk to damaging aftershocks and protective response to warnings.

The role of searching in shaping reactions to earthquake risk information

We assessed public response to an earthquake prediction for the San Francisco Bay Area on a sample of households from eight Bay Area counties. Descriptive findings suggested that an earthquake culture exists in the study population. We tested criticisms of interactionist theory — its failure to take motives for behavior and social position into account — using multiple regression analysis. We conclude that motives and social position matter little in determining social action, and that more work is needed to determine how variations in new information create ambiguity, which differentially fosters searching, the formation of alternative definitions, and subsequent action.

The social psychology of public response to warnings of a nuclear power plant accident

This article reviews the process of public response to warnings of an impending nuclear power plant emergency. Significant evidence exists to suggest that people engage in protective action in response to warnings based upon the substance and course through which emergency warning information is disseminated. The three basic components of a warning system are defined, and the elements of public response to warnings are summarized. Popular myths about public response to warnings are outlined and dispelled based upon current research verification. The conclusion provides an overview and synthesis of the warning response process.

Communication in Crisis Explaining Evacuation Symbolically

The communication of messages of the impending impact of some natural disaster agent can play a key role in averting natural catastrophe. This article examines the social processes involved in disaster warnings which function to elicit evacuation in such threat situations. These processes and the role of the mass media in forming situational definitions requisite for evacuation are examined in reference to data gathered in Rapid City, South Dakota where on June 9, 1972 a flash flood produced a major disaster.

Sustainable Development And Hazards Mitigation In The United States: Disasters By Design Revisited

It has become clear that natural and related technological hazards and disasters are not problems that can be solved in isolation. The occurrence of disasters is a symptom of broader and more basic social problems. Since 1994, a team of over 100 expert academics and practitioners — including members of the private sector — have assessed, evaluated, and summarized knowledge about natural and technological hazards in the United States from the perspectives of the physical, natural, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences. The major thesis of the findings was losses from hazards and inability to comprehensively reduce losses of all types are the consequences of narrowand shortsighted development patterns, cultural premises, and attitudes toward the natural environment, science, and technology. To address these broad and basic problems, the study included proposals for ways in which people and the institutions of the United States can take responsibility for disaster losses, reduce future hazard losses, and link hazard mitigation to sustainable development.

Clarifying the Attribution of Recent Disaster Losses: A Response to Epstein and McCarthy

—HANS VON STORCH Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany he December 2004 issue of BAMS contains an article warning of the threats of abrupt climate change (Epstein and McCarthy 2004, hereafter EM04). The article seeks to raise awareness of the risks of an abrupt change in climate related to human influences on the climate system, but, in doing so it repeats a common factual error. Specifically, it identifies the recent growth in economic damages associated with weather and climate events, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Jeanne and tornadoes in the United States, as evidence of trends in extreme events, arguing “the rising costs associated with weather volatility provide another derived indicator of the state of the climate system . . . the economic costs related to more severe and volatile weather deserves mention as an integral indicator of volatility.” Although the attribution of increasing damages to climate changes is but one of many assertions made by EM04, the repetition of this erroneous claim is worth correcting because it is not consistent with current scientific understandings. The rising costs of disasters are important, and so too is human influence on climate. Policy makers should, indeed, pay attention to both issues. But a robust body of research shows very little evidence to support the claim that the rising costs associated with weather and climate events are associated with changes in the frequency or intensity of events themselves.1 Instead, the research that has sought to explain increasing disaster losses has found that the trend has far more to do with the nature of societal vulnerability to those events. This conclusion is borne out in literature from the natural hazards community (e.g., Mileti 1999; Tierney 2001) and the societal impacts of the climate community (e.g., Glantz 2003; Changnon et al. 2000), and is consistent with the findings of the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Houghton et al. 2001; McCarthy et al. 2001).

The Study of Mobile Public Warning Messages: A Research Review and Agenda

In 2011, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began authorizing emergency management officials to broadcast Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) to cellular phones and other mobile devices to help notify people of imminent hazards. WEAs are 90-characters long, geographically targeted emergency messages sent by government alerting authorities through the nations mobile telecommunications networks, which, for the first time, allow officials to directly notify at-risk publics where they live and work. The use of WEAs has outpaced investigation of their benefits, limitations, and actual and potential consequences. To address this critical gap in scholarship and public understanding, we integrate literature from the fields of public warning, instructional crisis communication, and mobile health communication. Combining these literatures, we outline a theoretical and applied communication research agenda for public warning messages delivered over mobile devices.

Who Prepares for Terrorism

The National Survey of Disaster Experiences and Preparedness (NSDEP) examined whether households in the United States have engaged in proactive preparedness and avoidance activities since September 11, 2001, and whether the activities reported were done because of terrorism, natural disasters, other reasons, or any combination of reasons. Reported activities were examined by geographic area of exposure to or threat of 9/11, gender, race/ethnic identification, and income. The sample was drawn using random-digit-dialing (RDD) supplemented with surname lists. Data were collected between April 13, 2007, and February 13, 2008. Few households did preparedness and avoidance activities exclusively because of concerns about terrorism. Rather decisions were motivated by a combination of reasons. Residents of New York City and Washington, DC, men, and high-income respondents reported more preparedness activities, whereas low-income respondents, African Americans, and Hispanics reported more avoidance activities.

Communicating Public Earthquake Risk Information

Efforts in the United States continue to communicate information about earthquake risk to the public. These efforts fall into two categories. First, risk is communicated to inform and educate citizens about general earthquake risk. Second, risk is communicated in reference to the prediction of warning of a specific impending earthquake. Central to both risk communication types are the perceptions which the public forms about earthquake risk since these perceptions direct public behavior.