Disaster Warnings in Your Pocket: How Audiences Interpret Mobile Alerts for an Unfamiliar Hazard

Bean, Hamilton; Liu, Brooke F.; Madden, Stephanie; Sutton, Jeannette; Wood, Michele M.; Mileti, Dennis S.

doi:10.1111/1468-5973.12108

Cited by 88 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Clearly spell out all words, including the source of the message and timing (i.e., time zones) (Cao, Boruff and McNeill 2016;Bean et al 2016;Bennett 2015;Temnikova, Vieweg and Castillo 2015; Department of Justice 2012).…”

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Bean et al 2016). o Additionally, familiar terminology can include well-known (local) landmarks (e.g., national parks, road names [not mile markers], and suburbs) (Cao, Boruff and McNeill 2016;Kuligowski et al 2013;Hui et al 2012).…”

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One way is to provide appropriate information about the message source (Mileti and Sorensen 1990). The source of the message should be clearly stated, spelled out in full (i.e., without abbreviations or acronyms) (Bean et al 2016), and perceived as credible by the receiving population (Wood et al 2015;Liu, Fraustino and Jin 2015). Additionally, the source of the message should be listed first (Bean et al 2016).…”

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The source of the message should be clearly stated, spelled out in full (i.e., without abbreviations or acronyms) (Bean et al 2016), and perceived as credible by the receiving population (Wood et al 2015;Liu, Fraustino and Jin 2015). Additionally, the source of the message should be listed first (Bean et al 2016). Research shows that the appropriate order of message characteristics for 280 c messages is as follows: Source, hazard, location, timeline and guidance (Wood et al 2015).…”

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…• The source of the message could be expanded upon by spelling out the entire name and even the individuals responsible for crafting the message, • Additional information could be provided on the hazard by adding details about the hazard's impacts and consequences of the hazard (Sutton and Woods 2016;Wood et al 2015), • Additional details on hazard location can include information on where the receiver is in relation to the event, a task at which maps can be particularly helpful (Bean et al 2016;Wood et al 2015) • The timing (or a timeline) of the event can be expanded upon by spelling out abbreviations that are currently used to express timing and time zones • For guidance, additional information can expand upon current methods; e.g., "shelter in place" or simply "to shelter", by instructing individuals using imperative or instructional message style exactly how and where to take shelter (Sutton et al 2015a). Similarly, instead of instructing individuals to evacuate (only), additional information could be provided to recipients on evacuation routes and/or methods for evacuation (Wood et al 2015).…”

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

Kuligowski¹,

Kimball²

2018

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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 publication provides 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 begins with a brief background on alerting systems, focusing specifically on outdoor siren systems and short message alerts. The next section presents the methods used for the development of evidence-based guidance on public alerts, including methods for review of literature on public response to public alerting systems, the development of preliminary guidance based on these reviews, and the finalization of the guidance presented here in this report. Then, guidance for communities on the creation and provision of public alerts for those under imminent threat is presented. This document ends with a discussion on unanswered questions, providing opportunities for further research into various areas of public alerting.

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Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Guidance On Short Message Alerting For Those Under Imminent mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Kuligowski¹,

Kimball²

2018

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Understanding the uncertainty of disaster tweets and its effect on retweeting: The perspectives of uncertainty reduction theory and information entropy

Son

Lee

Larsen

et al. 2019

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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The rapid and wide dissemination of up‐to‐date, localized information is a central issue during disasters. Being attributed to the original 140‐character length, Twitter provides its users with quick‐posting and easy‐forwarding features that facilitate the timely dissemination of warnings and alerts. However, a concern arises with respect to the terseness of tweets that restricts the amount of information conveyed in a tweet and thus increases a tweetʼs uncertainty. We tackle such concerns by proposing entropy as a measure for a tweetʼs uncertainty. Based on the perspectives of Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), we theorize that the more uncertain information of a disaster tweet, the higher the entropy, which will lead to a lower retweet count. By leveraging the statistical and predictive analyses, we provide evidence supporting that entropy validly and reliably assesses the uncertainty of a tweet. This study contributes to improving our understanding of information propagation on Twitter during disasters. Academically, we offer a new variable of entropy to measure a tweetʼs uncertainty, an important factor influencing disaster tweetsʼ retweeting. Entropy plays a critical role to better comprehend URLs and emoticons as a means to convey information. Practically, this research suggests a set of guidelines for effectively crafting disaster messages on Twitter.

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Dealing with inconsistent weather warnings: effects on warning quality and intended actions

Weyrich

Scolobig

Patt

2019

Meteorological Applications

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In the past four decades, the private weather forecast sector has been developing next to National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, resulting in additional weather providers. This plurality has led to a critical duplication of public weather warnings. For a specific event, different providers disseminate warnings that are more or less severe, or that are visualized differently, leading to inconsistent information that could impact perceived warning quality and response. So far, past research has not studied the influence of inconsistent information from multiple providers. This knowledge gap is addressed here. An inconsistency matrix was developed and employed to categorize the level of inconsistency across multiple warnings. The matrix provides warning pairs inconsistent in visualization, text or both. A survey experiment was conducted in Switzerland (N = 1,335). The results show that half of the people who received warnings from different providers for the same event indicated that these were inconsistent. The evaluation of warning quality and intended actions in a decision scenario characterized by two severe rainfall warnings shows the negative impacts of inconsistency. For example, consistent warnings are least confusing and inconsistent visual and textual warnings are most confusing. However, there are no significant differences in the effects of inconsistent textual information compared to inconsistent visual information on warning quality and intended actions. These findings offer empirical justification to enhance co‐operation between public and private weather providers. To improve warnings, the providers should find an agreement to be consistent either in the text or in the visualization.

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Disaster Warnings in Your Pocket: How Audiences Interpret Mobile Alerts for an Unfamiliar Hazard

Cited by 88 publications

References 44 publications

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

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

Understanding the uncertainty of disaster tweets and its effect on retweeting: The perspectives of uncertainty reduction theory and information entropy

Dealing with inconsistent weather warnings: effects on warning quality and intended actions

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