I was recently asked to sit on a panel at the UCL IRIRUK Japan Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop with the question 'Communication of Disaster Science for Mitigation,
Recovery and Reconstruction: what do the users need?' I drafted some thoughts
as notes, which may be of interest!
1) What is the role of communication in disasters?
My research has focused on Early Warning Systems (EWS), at the
interface between science and putting it into practice. I would like to make four keys points /
comments on the role of communication in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), but specifically looking at the
interface between hazard and risk, and focus around the first mile, rather than
the traditional ‘last mile’.
In 2004 the Andaman Sumatra earthquake and
tsunami changed the worlds of many people. There was no uncertainty in the case
of the tsunami hazard, it had been created, yet more than 230,000 people died, so why that with our
scientific capabilities, such devastation and suffering occurred? No warning,
or communication tools were present.
I have focused my research largely around
volcanoes, what I believe to be the most challenging of all, producing multiple
hazards, when active or inactive, over differing spatiality and temporalities,
and often inherently unpredictable, yet they nearly always provide some
indication of unrest. The loss of over 23,000 lives by the relatively small eruption
of Nevado del Ruiz, in Colombia 1985, is another tragic example where the
scientists foresaw the volcanic eruption, the melting of the ice caps, and the
generation of a significant lahar that would inundate the City of Armero around
60km away. The key decision-makers and authorities in the city chose not to
respond to the warning, with devastating consequences. Barry Voight stated in a
key review publication that ‘caused ‘purely and simply, by cumulative human
error - by misjudgement, indecision and bureaucratic short-sightedness’
(Voight, 1990, p.383).
It is clear that whilst there is still
significant improvement needed in developing our scientific knowledge and
capacity to foresee and accurate predict natural hazards, this is of course
only part of the requirement in minimising a disaster. Yet, it is the
correlation as demonstrated by the Sumatra and Nevado del Ruiz crises, amongst many
others, that better science does not equal less disasters that raises questions.
In the volcano community it is clear to me
that most investment goes into developing monitoring capabilities, conducting
research, employing staff to interpret data and dedicate years to understanding
the unique nature of each volcano. Yet, seemingly
little is invested in staff who are able to communicate, integrate, and use the
scientific information to reduce and manage risk, with the vulnerable
populations, and this person is very overworked. The USGS volcano observatories currently only
have one funded outreach officer whereas around ten years ago they had five, and
Indonesia now has around 15. With investment in only one side of the equation, the
likelihood of disasters could arguably be increasing.
In fact insurance losses from geological
disasters are continuing to rise. The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in
Japan (MunichRe) caused losses of over US$40bn, for example, while the on-going
insurance problems and costs in Christchurch, New Zealand stand at over $13bn.
While disasters in ‘prepared’ countries are resulting in fewer deaths (despite
the large scale of some events), their economic impact is growing as business
becomes more dependent on functioning infrastructure in an ever-growing
technological and globalised world.
3) How do we communicate across phenomenological
knowledge, hazard, and risk?
Many scientists working for government organisations inherently have a legal mandate to monitor and warn about hazardous events, and thus the requirement is to aid the DRR. There are however, some counties more willing than others to invest in integrating ‘social sciences’ to help foster more effective
communication and generating meaningful warnings and relationships in preparation
for disasters.
Scientists and the user groups are currently
really struggling with this relationship and definition and interaction of
hazard and risk. Perhaps two sides of a
coin, places such as Indonesia and the Philippines are pioneers that fully
embrace that hazard knowledge, assessment is interrelated to risk assessment
and knowledge and are treated together, in one organisation. Given the vast
numbers and scale of events in both locations, particularly in the context of
volcanological hazards, lessons can, and should be sought from these approaches
that have recently shown incredible successes, the evacuation of over 1 million
people at Mt Pinatubo 1991, the successful evacuations on Merapi in 2010, and
the relatively small loss in recent Typhoon Haiyan given the scale of the
event.
But another approach, at the other end of the
spectrum is also growing in force. Following the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy in
2009, where 308 people died, approximately 1,500 were injured, and 65,000
people were made homeless, a shock wave has been sent through the hazard
scientific community, causing scientists to become increasingly concerned about
how much hazard and risk advice they provide prior to a crisis. This has lead
to an increase in use of probabilistic representations of uncertainty for
forecasts. For more on L'Aquila please see an article I wrote on SciDevNet 'Scientists on trail: lessons for disaster preparedness' or this great piece in Nature 'Scientists on trial: at fault?'.
Scientists now fear being
involved in risk management, and only wish to provide information relating to the hazard to the key assigned
decision-maker who has to make a decision on how to respond, normally civil
protection. This is potentially a dangerous position to be. In any crisis, who
is the expert when making key decisions? Whose responsibility is it, and are
there traces of accountability in the decision-making process? Roles and
responsibilities need to be clearly defined for each country, that fits its
legal framework and mandates.
4) What do the users need?
Is there some who can
understand the hazard and all the scientific uncertainties involved, as well as
the risks posed? Unlikely. Perhaps the models adopted by Indonesia and
Philippines amongst others, attempts to bridge this gap. To date, however,
there has been relatively little research into how scientists involved in
geohazards make sense of scientific data and share hazard information amongst
stakeholders, both in the long and short term, and how decisions are made.
Without understanding this process, there is perhaps little hope of setting
best practices, or at least understanding pros and cons in communication tools
and practices
A small insight into this
issue, can perhaps be drawn from my own research, in investigating the
challenges involved in assigning a volcano alert level, and the issues involved
in negotiating uncertainty, risk, and complexity in decision-making processes. This
work provides first analysis of the decision-making processes involved in
assigning a warning in a volcano alert level system, a tool is used to
communicate warning information from scientists to civil authorities managing
volcanic hazards, usually but not always based on the activity of the volcano
(hazard info only).
Two key findings were discovered. First, that observatory scientists encounter difficulties in
interpreting scientific data, and in making decisions about what a volcano is
doing, when dealing with complex volcanic processes. Second, the decision to
move between alert levels is based upon a complex negotiation of perceived
social and environmental risks, not just the hazard. This research establishes
that decision-making processes are problematic in the face of intrinsic
uncertainties and risks, such that warning systems become complex and
nonlinear.
This also shows that hazard
and risk are in practice, very difficult to separate, and that by separating
them, the gap between expertise on the hazard and risk will get bigger as
people become reluctant to be engaged In the other. As such the repercussions
of L’Aquila raised interesting questions for us all.
Unless
we invest and understand how scientific, hazard, and risk knowledge is created,
shared, and effectively communicated, I am not convinced that we will see a
reduction in disaster impacts.
So what are the potential
solutions?
Hazard scientists work tirelessly to produce
information and various products and systems to communicate their work to their
user groups. But have we stopped to ask whether this is the information these
user groups need and want? Is this information in a format they can understand
and use? Unless there is evaluation and analysis on the effectiveness of
communication and knowledge sharing, it is possible that scientists are
investing limited resources ineffectively?
This in turns requires an investment in
researchers and staff to conduct these and develop deeper understanding into
bridging science and action.
There also needs to be further consideration
to what roles the responsibilities and roles are of various stakeholders, that
leads to issues of accountability. Perhaps by clarifying these roles, the
issues of hazard and risk assessment and management can be discussed more
holistically given the uncertainties involved in geological hazards.
5) To
achieve this requires funding and a change in mind set for the hazard community, and a focus also on the first mile, and to invest in it. The question is, what is preventing
this?
