Let Your Community Teach You Their Needs
http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/Risk-Must-Be-Personalized.html
Emergency communication is just as important before a disaster hits as it is during and after. Reaching the public with the correct message in the correct way – or in many correct ways – is key to ensuring they know what to do when faced with an emergency.
During a crisis, the public will often communicate their needs for future communication and education by showing gaps in their response.
Taking a look over your agency’s response to an emergency or disaster is wise, but do you also take a good look at how the public responded? Their actions or inactions will tell you a lot about where to focus your energy, time, and money in the future. It will also tell which group is listening or following a specific type of media and where gaps in messaging might be found.
Another concern is the focus of your pre-disaster messaging. As Emergency Management Magazine recently stated, “if the goal of our risk communication is awareness, we’ve already lost the disaster resilience battle.” The vast majority of your community is aware of their risks, so focusing on risk is unneeded.
Transforming their awareness into action is the ultimate goal. To do that involves making the risk personal and asking for small steps towards reducing their risk, which will lead to more confidence and larger steps towards the goal.
A community’s needs in a disaster vary widely and many locales have minimal resources to spend trying to find where they can improve. By watching and listening, you can identify and address communications gaps, overlooked populations, and education needs.
(Source: Emergency Management Magazine)
Risk Must Be Personalized
Risk communication must be understood and believed and it has to be confirmed.
"Preparing people for emergencies is about changing the way they think, not just before disasters, but also during them. What will make our communities more disaster resilient is to use emergency preparedness outreach as training for individuals to become effective disaster decision-makers: to teach them how to think in a crisis; to know what the disaster environment looks and feels like; to adapt; and to be empowered to take the necessary actions once decisions are made"\http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/Risk-Must-Be-Personalized.html
Emergency communication is just as important before a disaster hits as it is during and after. Reaching the public with the correct message in the correct way – or in many correct ways – is key to ensuring they know what to do when faced with an emergency.
During a crisis, the public will often communicate their needs for future communication and education by showing gaps in their response.
Taking a look over your agency’s response to an emergency or disaster is wise, but do you also take a good look at how the public responded? Their actions or inactions will tell you a lot about where to focus your energy, time, and money in the future. It will also tell which group is listening or following a specific type of media and where gaps in messaging might be found.
Another concern is the focus of your pre-disaster messaging. As Emergency Management Magazine recently stated, “if the goal of our risk communication is awareness, we’ve already lost the disaster resilience battle.” The vast majority of your community is aware of their risks, so focusing on risk is unneeded.
Transforming their awareness into action is the ultimate goal. To do that involves making the risk personal and asking for small steps towards reducing their risk, which will lead to more confidence and larger steps towards the goal.
A community’s needs in a disaster vary widely and many locales have minimal resources to spend trying to find where they can improve. By watching and listening, you can identify and address communications gaps, overlooked populations, and education needs.
(Source: Emergency Management Magazine)
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