Canton on Emergency Management

One small change can improve your emergency message

Dr. Dennis Mileti

You may recall that several weeks ago I talked about the three critical elements of an emergency message. I said that any message had to have three elements: what has happened, what does it mean to the recipient, and the action that you wanted the recipient ent to take. I'd like to expand on that with the benefit of some new research.

I'm just back from the Natural Hazards Workshop in Broomfield, Colorado, where I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Dennis Mileti speak. Dr. Mileti is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder and former director of the Natural Hazards Center. His book, Disasters by Design, summarized scientific and engineering knowledge about natural hazards and made recommendations for national policies and programs. It is considered a "must read" for new emergency managers. Mileti is also considered a national expert on risk communication and public warning.

Dr. Mileti's latest research suggests that not only is the content of the message important, the order in which elements are presented can also affect how the recipient perceives the message. Dr. Mileti believes that it is important that the message be seen as coming from a credible source. For this reason, he suggests that the first element in a message should be the identity of the sender. Mileti advises that an emergency message follow this format:

1. the source of the message
2. a description of the hazard, i.e. what has happened and what it means to the recipient
3. what actions the recipient needs to take

In his research, Mileti found that messages presented in this format were significantly more likely to be acted upon.

 

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My wife and I were spending a quiet evening watching one of our favorite shows when the program was interrupted by an emergency alert system message. The message concerned two children who had been abducted from their home in a nearby Bay Area community. The message provided the names and ages of the children and the name of the woman that had kidnapped them. Unfortunately, that was all the information that the message provided.

When the program resumed, my wife and I looked at each other and marveled that such a useless message could have been sent out using the emergency alert system. There was no information about how the kidnapper was traveling, where she was bound, or any description of her or the children. In other words, there were no cues that a citizen could use to identify either the kidnapper or the children besides the fact that she was a woman of indeterminate age traveling with two children.

I have seen this problem occur all too often with emergency messages. In a rush to use the system, we sometimes neglect to determine what message we want to send to the public and, more importantly, what actions we want them to take. If we think back to the messages we received following 9/11, we see the same problem: a warning with little real content and no recommended protective action.

In crafting your emergency message you need to keep in mind three basic questions that the public wants answered:

1. What has happened?
2. What does it mean to me?
3. What can I do about it?

These three basic questions are at the heart of any successful message.Keep them in mind and your message has a better chance of being heard and acted upon. Neglect them and you end up with a message that is at best confusing and at worst generates alarm and concern in the recipient.