WEEK 5

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University of South Australia *

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5296

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Communications

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Nov 24, 2024

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WEEK 5 - ELEMENTS OF RISK Module 2: The Emergency and Disaster Management Context Now that you have covered some of the theoretical and conceptual elements of disaster management, it is time to consider the context in which the field operates. Emergency management is in an interesting position in that it deals with hard facts (eg. the occurrence of a disaster and what needs to be done to address it) in a context strongly influenced by subjective factors (eg. how much should be spent on mitigation versus a government's other priorities). As we have seen, risk is at the centre of much of emergency management's activities - the need to assess, characterise, and reduce risk runs throughout many of the field's activities. This week, we will further explore some of the ways in which we do this. 5.1. CHARACTERISING AND ASSESSING RISK As we have noted previously, an incident requires a hazard, something which causes harm. In the absence of a hazard, there will be no incident and thus no potential for it to escalate to disastrous proportions. It also requires exposure - that is, humans, infrastructure, or some other element of interest to society or the economy must be present at the same place and time as the hazard. If no such element is present, there will be no impact on society and thus no potential for a disaster. It is worth noting that this definition of exposure does not encompass the possible impact of an event on parts of an ecosystem other than humans. For example, a bushfire in an uninhabited area might cause no injuries or property damage, but might affect the distribution of animal and plant life in the region; if this were to have further downstream effects that impacted on inhabited areas or domestic plants and animals, it would actually be important to humans, but our main definition of exposure would not be able to deal with it. In most cases, however, it is simpler to assume that such events are outside of our control and management, and to select a perspective that encompasses the most immediately relevant and most directly controllable elements of the situation (as discussed in Week 5's content on systems approaches and perspectives). The third factor that affects disaster risk is vulnerability, which we have also discussed previously: social, physical, and environmental factors that affect the likelihood of adverse outcomes in a community. As noted in Week 4's content, there is no one universally-accepted method of quantifying vulnerability, and it is probably not possible to formulate one. Even so, emergency and disaster management generally conceptualises hazard, exposure, and vulnerability as the three components of disaster risk, and expresses disaster risk as arising from the addition or multiplication of these factors. Multiplication is a commonly-seen metaphor in this context because the effects of adding more people and property when exposed are often not linear and affect areas outside of immediate material considerations. For example, an evacuation plan for a neighbourhood might rely on a single road leading away from a likely hazard. As the neighbourhood's population increased, the number of vehicles owned would generally increase too, and would do so more quickly or

slowly depending on the average income of the population. This means that an evacuation event would involve more traffic on the key road and take longer, increasing the probability of the plan being ineffective or people being exposed to the hazard in the process. Additionally, the more people are present in an area, the more time they would require to deal with social functions related to evacuation, such as contacting family members or making arrangements with their workplace. This would, again, increase the duration and complexity of the process, as well as increasing the chance of unplanned events such as refusing to leave. The attempt to characterise the probability of emergencies has led to the use of various verbal shorthands and descriptors, including the famous description of events as "once in 100 years" (or whatever the relevant time period is). The actual meaning of this type of phrase is much more limited than the way they are often used popularly. It means that some defining element of the event, such as the maximum height of floodwaters or number of acres burned by bushfires, would be expected to occur once in the specified period of time, based on probabilities calculated from long-term observations. This can also be thought of as percentages, simply by applying a basic division process to the numbers provided: for example, a once-in- 100-year event has a 1% (1/100) chance of being matched or exceeded in any given year. Such events show great variability from year to year, and the fact that an event is described as, for example, "once in 100 years" is often misinterpreted to mean that it recurs regularly at intervals of 100 years. This is not the case and should be kept in mind when dealing with contexts of risk communication. Risk communication is discussed more in the next section of this learning book. Formulations like this can be useful have come to be used and interpreted in various technical and popular contexts. In addition to their popularity in the media and other communications with the public, they form the basis of calculating insurance rates and premiums. More on the insurance industry is presented in Week 9. PREVIOUS NEXT WEEK 5 - ELEMENTS OF RISK 5.2. RISK COMMUNICATION An effective communication strategy is critically important to the discipline of emergency management. The form of risk communication most commonly associated with the field is directed at the public – such as emergency warnings, incident alerts, and so forth. However, emergency management professionals also communicate with elected officials, the media, and the private sector, in both public and private contexts. These stakeholders also require accurate, timely, and accessible information in order to make decisions and perform their respective functions, but the content they are provided may differ depending on their respective goals, priorities, and audience.

Regardless of the target or audience, risk communication strategies form a component of all four parts of the emergency management framework (after Haddow et al, 2020): supporting prevention by promoting the implementation of strategies, technologies, and actions; communicating preparedness messages that provide the public knowledge and encourage relevant action; facilitating responses with public notifications, warnings, and situation reports; and enhancing recovery by conveying overviews of events and interventions, as well as information on relief operations. This kind of management is required because, despite the frequency and prominence of crisis, emergency, and disaster in human history, not all instinctive reactions are beneficial from an emergency management point of view. People tend to be relatively effective at certain kinds of immediate actions, such as getting themselves and their loved ones to a physically safe location (at least, if they have the time and the ability). The majority of people will generally accept the declaration of an emergency or crisis by political figures, although they are more likely to do so if the threat is understandable and the figure making the declaration is one they trust. They also tend to follow instructions given by authority figures such as police, firefighters, and other emergency service personnel to the best of their ability. Other tendencies are less advantageous and can even hamper both the response to an emergency and the recovery. For example, not all of the strongest reactions to an emergency are observed among people who actually experience it – sometimes, people more distant from the threat have vicarious experiences and feelings about it (CDC, 2002). These feelings can lead to actions, and these actions are likely to be divergent from the most advantageous (from the emergency management point of view), because the lack of direct experience with the issue deprives the person/s of a basis for making the normal type of judgments. An interesting example of this came from the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, specifically the phase reached in January 2022. Before this time, the majority of outbreaks in Australia had been relatively small (with the exception of the one that occurred in Victoria between July and October of 2020). But by 2022, a combination of a more infectious but less severe virus variant and lower levels of government intervention led to case numbers previously unseen in the country. In spite of this, many members of the public still had little to no direct experience with COVID-19; many people had only experienced the virus through news stories about people being hospitalised or dying (many of which came from countries that were affected much more than Australia, due to distinctive biomedical or social characteristics of their populations). Despite the fact that most cases were mild or asymptomatic, and governments across Australia urged people not to go to hospitals unless they were seriously ill, there were incidents such as people presenting at emergency rooms with symptoms equivalent to a common cold, thereby diverting time and attention from more serious cases and particularly from people hospitalised for other reasons; calling 000 for general health advice (estimated to be a quarter of all emergency calls in Victoria at the time); and requesting diagnostic tests from paramedics – a service that paramedics do not provide (ABC News, 2022). Even in less extreme cases, certain kinds of reactions can, if widespread enough, act to undermine preparedness and response efforts. For example, denial is a possible

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reaction to a threat, particularly if it does not have any visible elements, if it is distant in time and/or space from the person, or (conversely) if the threat involves something that is part of everyday life which the person believes they already understand. Fear and avoidance are other possible reactions, and while they superficially seem to create separation between people and hazards, they are detrimental when taken to excess. They cause mental stress, conflict between segments of the public, and even socioeconomic damage. (Consider the effects of people avoiding a certain industry, a certain part of a city, or a certain subset of the population, because of a fear-based association with a hazard or risk.) Fear is also fatiguing: it is a response based on a feedback loop between psychological and physiological systems designed to subside when the danger has passed, and it will do so in time, regardless of what happens externally. The effects of this can manifest as withdrawal, as in hopelessness leading to paralysis; more commonly, we would observe lower uptakes of protective behaviour and lower inclination to follow emergency management procedures and instructions (particularly if the individual or population did not end up experiencing serious harm – they would conclude that the professionals were wrong about the risk). These responses are part of human nature; if we try to change human nature, we will always fail. Fortunately for us, human beings also have a rational side, and by appealing to people’s rationality, we can encourage the kind of behaviour and responses that will be more advantageous to emergency management goals, and (just as importantly) beneficial to members of the public themselves. One of the major goals of risk communication in public health is to provide people with the knowledge or facts they need to make decisions about their health behaviour. Clearly, this is also a suitable goal for emergency management, with adjustments for the fact that preparing for and responding to a physical emergency requires different actions than those covered in health promotion or health education. In times without an acute event, when prevention and preparedness are paramount, it is a useful general rule to keep messages moderated. Hazards and risks should not be understated, but they should not be overstated either. As we have already noted, raising expectations that fail to eventuate (in either direction) will lead many people to conclude that the experts made a mistake – or, worse, that they lied for some reason of their own – thus reducing the likelihood of ongoing co-operation and undermining trust in experts. Recommendations for actions should be as specific as possible: an instruction like “watch out for bushfires” does not give people an idea of what they can do, whereas something like “check your property for potential bushfire fuel, and plan an escape route” does. This is not only conducive to individual and community safety, but also gives the person/s a feeling of agency and of partnership in emergency management, both of which make them more likely to take action. During and after an event, the same principles generally apply, with an important note to make about what is perhaps the first thing we associate with large groups during an emergency: panic. In practice, panic of the kind we might instinctively think of (blind, aimless actions, as portrayed in disaster-themed movies and other popular culture) is uncommon. It becomes more likely when instructions are vague, and/or trust in authority is low – and, perhaps counterintuitively, when the public thinks that authorities are actively trying to prevent panic. People tend to assume that an overt

or clumsy attempt to prevent panic means that there is something to panic about, and that authorities are trying to hide it from them. Emergency management can be viewed as a collaboration between various authorities, the government, economic sectors, the public, and others. Communications theory holds that the ideal type of communication for effective, in- depth collaborative operation is two-way symmetrical communication – honest dialogue whose goal is not persuasion, but understanding. While it is probably impossible in this context to establish the same level of trust that exists between people and their friends and family, it is quite possible to make the public and other stakeholders into effective partners in the pursuit of shared goals. Communication that focuses not only on these shared goals, but also on the everyday concerns of stakeholders, and on acknowledging the validity of their objectives and perspectives, is much more likely to be successful (both in terms of convincing them of a situation’s seriousness, and in terms of facilitating PPRR-related processes). PREVIOUS NEXT WEEK 5 - ELEMENTS OF RISK 5.3. SPACE JUNK: IS IT A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN? Week 5 Reading Activity - Space junk: is it a disaster waiting to happen? Read “Space junk: is it a disaster waiting to happen?”, at https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/space-junk-is-it-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen . Then answer the following questions. 1. Why do you think past governments and space agencies overlooked the problem of space junk? 2. What additional or downstream risks would be generated by a Kessler Syndrome-type incident? How might governments and agencies back on Earth react to these issues? How would the public react? 3. Governments have sometimes had a degree of co-operation on certain global issues like the ozone layer and climate change, but have rarely done so with regards to space junk. Why do you think this is the case? 4. SpaceX intends to launch 12,000 satellites despite the current situation in Earth orbit. Why do you think that space junk does not seem to have been considered in their plans?

5. Do you think that more space activity and more technology is a viable solution to preventing and preparing for a Kessler Syndrome? Why or why not? Click here to provide your response. PREVIOUS NEXT WEEK 5 - ELEMENTS OF RISK 5.4. WEEK 6 REVIEW QUESTIONS Week 6 Review Questions 1. How does it hinder emergency management when people react to a situation without having had direct exposure to it? 2. How does fear help people in an emergency situation? How does fear hurt people in an emergency situation? 3. What is the major goal of risk communication in public health? How might it also apply in emergency management? 4. How does the tone of communication affect people’s perception of an emergency situation? What is the goal of two-way symmetrical communication? Click here to provide your response. . WEEK 5 - ELEMENTS OF RISK 5.5. REFERENCES ABC News (2022) Frontline health workers say COVID-19 patients don’t know when to seek help. Available online at https://web.archive.org/web/20220117030913/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01- 17/people-with-mild-covid-19-symptoms-seeking-emergency-care/100756916 . Haddow, GD, Bullock, JA, and Coppola, DP (2021) Introduction to Emergency Management (Seventh Edition). Butterworth-Heinemann. Reynolds, B., Galdo, J.H., Sokler, L. and Freimuth, V.S., 2002. Crisis and emergency risk communication. Centers for Disease Control, USA.

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WEEK 5

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