Emergency warning messages: do colours and icons improve community readiness to act?

The negative impacts of natural hazards can be lessened by community members responding appropriately to emergency warning messages during disasters. This research adopts a multi-hazard approach to examine the effectiveness of response and recovery communication in communities affected by natural hazards. 

There are three Hazard Notes summarising this research: 

This Hazard Note (Hazard Note 81) applies well-established risk communications and psychological theory of human behaviour to determine whether colours and icons in emergency warning messages help to encourage action. This research, conducted in 2019, found that adding colours and/or icons to a bushfire evacuation message improves the reader's perceived self-efficacy, comprehension and probability to take action. 

Hazard Note 79 outlines 10 specific opportunities for emergency services agencies to improve their communication and messaging.

Hazard Note 80 details which types of specific messages encourage community readiness.