Published works

Recent natural hazard events in Australia and around the world provide constant reminders of why people should prepare and how people should behave. Yet, industry experiences and research shows that community members still fail to comply with instructions issued by government agencies [1]. Particularly in the response and recovery phases of a natural disaster, individuals ignore official emergency instructions in favour of community-generated warnings. While non-compliant behaviour is often not in the best interest of the individual or community, non-compliance is not necessarily malicious or even intentional. However, individuals who fail to comply with instructions issued during natural hazards significantly impede the emergency response because they (a) divert resources to compliance enforcement, (b) risk the lives of emergency service workers who may later be required to assist them, and (c) confuse the core safety message or instruction. Moreover, there is a limited understanding of the legal ramifications of non-compliance from perspectives of individuals, agencies, or corporations.

This year the Project team have undertaken two work packages; (1) social media pilot and (2) community focus groups on message comprehension. The social media pilot sought to examine decision-making, risk communication, and in particular the existing approach for official messages during response and recovery of natural disaster, via Twitter. The work package involved analysing around 50,000 Tweets exchanged about Tropical Cyclone Marcia, from 18 to 21 February inclusive. Results show that emergency messages include instructions and updates that may lack precision and assume community knowledge. In addition, community members demonstrate affect, overconfidence, and familiarity biases, and demonstrate limited appetite for irresponsibility displayed by journalists or other community members.  The findings of this study suggest the following opportunities exist for emergency services organisations; (1) add precision to updates and instructions, (2) filter out noise and introduce #official as a hashtag to signal and draw attention to important messages, (3) integrate stories that personalise risk and enhance self-efficacy to reflect trends in community tweets, (4) take advantages of affect and engage in preparation messages during the recovery phase, and (5) ground-truth to share knowledge about event and impact to add accuracy and overcome familiarity bias for the next disaster. The community focus groups, while still ongoing, were conducted to examine community comprehension of emergency warning messages. This qualitative work builds on research conducted by end-user organisations and addresses issues raised by the National Review of Warnings And Information, which was endorsed in May 2015. As at June 30, 2015, five focus groups had been conducted in Brisbane and Hervey Bay in Queensland, and the Dandenongs in Victoria. In July 2015, three focus groups will be conducted in Melbourne, Victoria, and Kempsey, New South Wales. Findings will be reported in the next quarterly reporting period.