Communicating and perceiving flood risks and warnings

A major outcome of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Flood risk communication project is a series of targeted flood warning research findings, developed in partnership with end-users. The Research into practice brief series provides concise summaries of research findings for end-users and practitioners, for which four new briefs were published this month. Find the first two in the series here.

Practice brief three, When is water on the roads dangerous?, provides an overview of interviews conducted with emergency services professionals who communicate about flood risk. The professionals represent State Emergency Services in each jurisdiction. Interviewees agreed that the safest advice for the public is to never enter floodwater, reflecting the concern that any advice related to how to drive through floodwater may encourage more drivers to take risks and may produce organisational and reputational risks. The findings of this brief highlight the complexity of understanding and communicating the risk of water on roads.

The Public survey of driving and recreating in floodwater brief communicates an overview of findings from a nationally representative survey of the Australian general public that investigated driving and recreating in floodwater. The aim is to explore the behaviour and decision making of the general public in Australia in relation to driving into, or recreating in, floodwater, and to discuss the implications for emergency services communication and messaging. The survey explores respondents’ experiences driving into floodwater and the factors that influenced their decision to drive into floodwater. The findings are useful for consideration in risk communication and advertising related to entering floodwater on roads.

The fifth brief in the series, Evaluation of flood risk communication materials, summarises two research activities: an online scan of recent flood risk communication campaigns, and analysis of questions relating to flood risk messaging and the perceived effectiveness of communications, from a nationally representative survey of the Australian public. Respondents were generally positive about the impacts of communication campaigns on discouraging people from entering floodwater, however the findings of this research indicate that more than half of the respondents had driven through floodwater, suggesting there is no positive link between campaign awareness and lower levels of risk taking.

SES personnel’s experiences of driving into floodwater is the sixth and latest practice brief and provides an overview of aggregated findings from surveys conducted with SES in four states and territories. The surveys explore the experiences of SES personnel encountering floodwater in SES vehicles. The findings of the surveys suggest that driving through floodwater in work vehicles is generally common, despite it being a risky practice. The outcomes of this research can be used to:

• inform risk assessment strategies for emergency workers
• target interventions to those personnel more ‘at risk’ of driving through floodwater
• guide the development of individual agency policies that larger agencies can use as a benchmark to assess changes in safety practice over time.

Overall, it is hoped that the data collected as part of this project will enable more informed and nuanced discussions around the risks involved in driving into floodwater and the elements that influence decision making. The findings provide insights for internal communication of risk as well as public education and risk communication.

All six briefs in the Research into practice brief series thus far are available to download. The final few briefs of this series will be released later this year.