Emergency manager decision‐making and tornado warning communication

Abstract

Emergency managers (EMs) play a critical role in communicating severe weather and tornado warnings to the public, yet communicating the uncertainty of when, where or if a tornado may hit remains a great challenge for EMs. Focus group and survey data concerning weather product usage, weather observing spotter interaction, and decisions to warn the public were collected from Oklahoma EMs in order to characterize the communication processes EMs employ during severe weather outbreaks. These processes include: (1) acquiring weather information, (2) interpreting the information in order to make weather hazard threat assessments, (3) verifying the information, and (4) making time-sensitive warning decisions. The results indicate that while EMs use a variety of weather and radar products to acquire information, weather observing spotters are key sources of verification data. With respect to warning the public about tornado threats, sirens are the primary method. These findings are related to the development of a new radar system being developed by the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), so that this new technology can be designed to reduce uncertainty in the EM decision-making and warning communication processes.

Climate extremes in the United States: recent research by physical geographers

“…Hammer and Schmidlin (2002) found that human response to tornado warnings is also contingent on such factors as warning lead times and availability of transportation or shelters. When identifying improvement opportunities for future warning dissemination and risk communication, some researchers have underscored the importance of coupling advances in technology with an understanding of human sociology and psychology vis-à-vis tornado events (Ashley, 2007;League et al, 2010). To illustrate, efforts to Physical Geography adopt fine-grained data to reduce uncertainty (League et al, 2010) or a new model to give forecasters credit for close calls to increase warning credibility should parallel efforts to educate the public about tornado path directions or the dangers of using highway overpasses as shelter (Schmidlin et al, 2009;Sherman-Morris, 2010;Suckling & Ashley, 2006).…”

Informing crisis alerts using social media: Best practices and proof of concept

“…Official messages need to be specific, consistent, clear, and accurate and should also include explicit conclusions about the threat. Several studies have also indicated that information is regarded more trustworthy if the source is located in the same social network, for instance neighbours, family, and friends, especially when compared to information coming through media (Crowe, 2010;Earle et al, 2010;Elliott & Pais, 2006;Friese, 2009;Gregg et al, 2007;Jalarajan Raj et al, 2010;Landau, 2011;League et al, 2010;Merchant et al, 2011;Mersham, 2010;Molinari & Handmer, 2011;Nakatani, Suzuki, Sakata, & Nishida, 2009;Samarajiva, 2005;Saylor, Cowart, Lipovsky, Jackson, & Finch, Jr., 2003;Sutton, 2009;Tekeli-Yes ßil et al, 2010;Veil et al, 2011;Voorhees, Vick, & Perkins, 2007;Wang & Li, 2008;Wei, Zhao, Yang, Du, & Marinova, 2010;Yates & Paquette, 2011).…”

“…Timely response is also an important evaluation factor when planning for using social media within emergency management organizations (Earle et al, 2010;Landau, 2011;League et al, 2010;Samarajiva, 2005;Wei et al, 2010).…”

“…Trust has got to do with both the sender of a warning and the receiver of that warning in relation to the three components source, channel, and message (Elliott & Pais, 2006;Friese, 2009;League et al, 2010;Mersham, 2010;Molinari & Handmer, 2011;Samarajiva, 2005;Stein et al, 2010;Tekeli-Yes ßil et al, 2010;Veil et al, 2011;Voorhees et al, 2007;Wei et al, 2010). This means that people's trust in a warning message is a result of both their prior experience with the source of the message, the channel used, and its content.…”

“…Regardless of channel, the message needs to be comprehensible, accurate, and timely (Gregg et al, 2007;League et al, 2010;Samarajiva, 2005;Sutton, 2009;Wang & Li, 2008).…”