In brief: Critical points of communication occur well before an event (planning), as an event is suspected to be imminent, and during a crisis. This work stream aims to tackle all three topics to ensure the best possible usage of all available information for the benefit of society. Citizen-science projects or crowdsourcing offers opportunities to collect highly valuable and very dense datasets on multiple hazards that can, for example, be used to enrich EEW and RIA Applications. At the same time, the omnipresence of location-aware mobile devices can be explored to deliver tailor-made and culture-specific alerts and information to people. Success will require interdisciplinary work with links between scientists, social scientists and practitioners outside academia. The specific objectives of this WP are therefore:
- Discuss the needs and understand the existing decision-making environments and usual routes of communication for each of the different audiences for risk messages (long-term decision-makers, government and organizational leaders, emergency services, public) in different countries.
- Review best practices in risk communication, focusing on dynamic information communication in a range of fields, including medical, economic/financial, natural hazards, engineering, and environmental.
- Undertake an iterated user-centered design process to develop a method of communication, with user-testing across different countries involved to integrate the design process. This will culminate in a formal controlled evaluation of the communications.
- Improve procedures for using internet-based intensity questionnaires for two-way communication and deriving useful scientific information on earthquakes (e.g., fast characterization of seismogenic faults).
- Exploit the LastQuake* (280k users), Earthquake Network† (400k users) and MeteoSuisse Apps (2 Million Users) for their synergies for crowdsourced EEWS and RIA.
- Detect triggered fires and landslides through social media monitoring and consider warnings also in a multi-hazard context.
Lead: EMSC
Participants: ETH Zürich, INGV, UNIBO, UCAM, UniBg
Contact: Dr. Rémy Bossu