A review of public response to short message alerts under imminent threat

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s Technical Investigation of the 2011 Joplin, MO tornado identified that no widely accepted standards exist for emergency communications in tornado events and more specifically, policies involving the use of communication systems to alert the public in advance of tornadoes.This study is designed to develop evidence-based guidance for communities on the creation and provision of public alerts, including both alerts provided by outdoor siren (warning) systems and "short messages" sent by social media or other short message service (SMS) platforms. It is the hope that this guidance can eventually be used as input for standardization, through codes and standards, of the procedures and practices for outdoor siren systems and short message alerts used by communities across the United States. Standardization of emergency communication policies and procedures could occur at multiple levels, including among multiple jurisdictions, state-wide, regionally, or even nationally.This document focuses on short message alerts, specifically presenting a review of platforms, usage and public response. First, an overview is provided on the current status of short message alerts in the United States, i.e., the current short message technology available and the ways in which this technology is used in communities across the United States. Second, a review of the literature is presented on the ways in which people respond to short message alerts and the current limitations of these systems in light of these findings. This document concludes with a discussion on the key findings and recommendations from the literature on the ways in which to improve current short message alerts, based on the methods by which people receive and process these types of alerts. Following this work, a document will be developed to provide the overall evidence-based guidance for communities on the creation and provision of public alerts.

Alerting under imminent threat: guidance on alerts issued by outdoor siren and short message alerting systems

“…In both Kuligowski and Wakeman (2017) and Kuligowski and Doermann (2018), literature reviews were performed to better understand how the public responds to two different alerting methods: auditory alerts and short message alerts. The methods of each literature review are described in this section.…”

“…A brief overview is provided on each of these systems here; and further information can be found in the associated literature reviews on each system (e.g., Kuligowski and Wakeman [2017]; Kuligowski and Doermann [2018]). …”

“…The focus of this study has been on short message alerts provided via IPAWS as WEAs (90-character limits) and short messages provided via Twitter (280-character limits). A brief discussion is provided on both platforms; please see Kuligowski and Doermann (2018) for a comprehensive overview.…”

“…The next section presents the methods used for development of evidence-based guidance for communities on the creation and provision of public alerts. This methods section includes a discussion of the methods used to review literature on public response to public alerting systems (see Kuligowski and Wakeman [2017] for a review of public response to audible alerting systems and Kuligowski and Doermann [2018] for a review of public response to short message alerts), the methods used for development of preliminary guidance based on these reviews, and the methods used to finalize the guidance presented here in this report. Next, guidance is presented on both outdoor siren system alerting and short message alerts targeting members of the public under imminent threat.…”

“…This Technical Note provided an overview on the current status of siren systems in the United States, as well as a review of the literature on the ways in which people respond to alerting signals (including siren systems) and the current limitations of outdoor siren systems in light of these findings. In 2018, a NIST Technical Note was published on short message alerts (Kuligowski and Doermann 2018). Short message alerts are messages with specific character restrictions -e.g., 90 or 280 characters in length -that are meant to alert individuals (under imminent threat) that something is wrong and that more information is available (elsewhere) on the emergency.…”