Hello. I’m Nnenia Campbell, and I’m deputy director at the
William Averette Anderson Fund, commonly referenced as the
Bill Anderson Fund, which is a nonprofit organization
whose mission it to expand the number of historically under-represented
professionals in the field of hazard and disaster research and practice.
I’m also a research associate with the Natural Hazards Center at the
University of Colorado-Boulder. Today I’ll be talking about applying
an equity lens to the process of risk communication, drawing on
two projects I had the honor of leading at the Natural Hazards Center.
Before proceeding, I want to acknowledge the work on risk
communication that I’ll be referencing today was made possible with funding
support from the U.S. Geological Survey as well as a supplemental award
from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via the National Science Foundation.
My discussion today draws from two separate projects.
The first was the development of risk communication guidance,
and the second project applies this overarching framework to
guide the development of earthquake information products related to
the rollout of the USGS-led HayWired earthquake scenario.
I’m going to start by summarizing how our risk communication guidance
project was developed and providing a quick overview
of some of the core principles that it identified.
The risk communication guidance that I’ll be discussing today was
developed as part of a project that was initiated in late 2019
as a collaboration between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Institute for Water Resources at the Natural Hazards Center.
As part of that effort, our team summarized the state
of knowledge about risk communication with a particular
focus on the needs of socially vulnerable populations.
This was intended to generate guidance for practitioners and technical experts
about how to apply best practices for communicating about disaster risk
while being aware of and responsive to the challenges faced by
socially vulnerable communities.
I’d like to take a moment to define the concept of social vulnerability
because it’s central to this discourse about equity and
inclusion as well as to the products that I’ll be discussing.
What we’re referring to when we use this phrase is a set of circumstances
that is socially produced. In other words, social vulnerability
is not an innate characteristic of individuals or communities, but rather
it’s a potential for harm that is born out of social processes and systems.
Socially vulnerable populations are those that face disproportionate disaster
risk due to a variety of social, economic, and historical factors.
Therefore, a particular set of characteristics may be associated
with greater social vulnerability in one environment, while that same
set of characteristics does not necessarily have these associations
in another setting with greater social protections and institutions
designed to address the needs of different groups.
Recognizing that vulnerability is a dynamic condition that is linked
to social processes is important because failure to understand that fact often
leads technical experts to develop solutions that are incompatible with
what the community actually needs and ineffective in addressing
the underlying issues with which they’re grappling.
With that understanding, I’m going to start breaking down how to build this
lens on social vulnerability into the risk communication process.
There are many important insights in the research literature that drill down into
different aspects of risk communication, but the materials that our team at the
Natural Hazards Center developed focus on comprehensive core principles
that boil much of it down into three primary ideas,
which I’ll discuss individually in a moment.
These general principles apply across different hazards and populations.
So, as we bring in the social vulnerability dimension,
it’s not a matter of creating different rules, but of understanding
how to apply those rules effectively and to conduct the communication
process equitably. The principles highlight different kinds of
considerations that need to be taken throughout the risk
communication process, and they are mutually informing.
So all three of these principles that you see here build on one another
and they’re interdependent. Now that I’ve given a broad overview
of the key concepts and principles, I’ll dig a little deeper and spend
some time walking through each of the three core principles.
The first is communicate through familiar and trusted messengers.
There are a few main concepts underlying this principle.
The first is that careful planning and relationship building are critical
for risk communicators, as trust and credibility
are the foundation for good communication relationships.
Additionally, working with credible, well-connected partners in target
communities helps to ensure that messages are appropriately
constructed and disseminated. These gatekeepers, or cultural brokers,
hold valuable expertise about their communities and may be comparatively
well-received by the target audience. Building partnerships with
organizations or individuals that are trusted by your target population
can strengthen your team’s risk communication efforts because those
partners can assist with delivering or vouching for your message.
While this is always true of effective risk communication, the need to identify
those trusted messengers is particularly important when reaching out to
marginalized communities that may have experienced conflict,
and even harm, at the hands of outside authorities in the past.
Moving on to Principle II, it is essential to provide clear, actionable information.
Because message recipients can’t act on information about the risks that they
face if they can’t access that information,
don’t understand it, or lack the resources necessary to respond to it.
When developing a risk communication plan and designing risk messages,
factors such as accessibility, barriers to action, and competing
priorities need to be considered if the process is to be equitable.
For example, overly complicated messages can fail to adequately signal
the risks people face or the steps necessary to reduce it.
Issues such as language barriers, cognitive limitations, competition
for attention – these can all hinder information uptake.
So it’s vital to develop messaging that is clear, consistent, and comprehensible.
But it’s important to move beyond simply sharing information if
the ultimate goal is to prompt some kind of response.
Pairing details about risk with actionable information empowers
message recipients to take steps to protect themselves.
It’s essential to establish the intent of the communication
and its desired effect. Communicators must also understand
the constraints that the audience faces so that the recommended actions are
reasonable and possible in light of the recipients’ circumstances.
The third and final principle is tailor messages and information
pathways for target audiences. This principle encourages us
to recognize the diversity that exists within any given community.
Tailoring your message is important because people don’t all communicate
in the same ways, follow the same information sources,
or have the same information needs. What you know about the
characteristics of your intended audience needs to
feed into how you frame and deliver your communications.
Although the message should remain consistent across pathways to avoid
confusion, leveraging diverse forms of media ensures that risk
communicators can cast a wide enough net to reach community
members with different abilities and information pathways.
Community partners can support message tailoring by applying
population-specific expertise about how messages should
be framed or what channel people are most likely to reach.
An opportunity to put the core principles of risk communication
into practice presented itself with the Diversifying Haywired
Communications project, which was initiated in the summer of 2021.
As many of you are likely familiar, the USGS HayWired scenario depicts
a scientifically realistic magnitude 7.0 earthquake sequence
and its cascading impacts on the Hayward Fault.
The findings of the third volume of the Scientific Investigations report
for the HayWired scenario highlight the societal consequences of damages
and disruptions expected to result from the events described in the scenario,
including impacts to socially vulnerable populations.
The Diversifying HayWired Communication project was developed
to help the HayWired team better connect with marginalized communities
in the Bay Area that are likely to face disproportionate impacts
from a large earthquake. The project team included contributors
to the HayWired scenario from the USGS and Stanford University
as well as fellows with the Bill Anderson Fund and
support from the Natural Hazards Center.
Specifically, the project was designed to address three main objectives that
inquired about what stakeholder groups in the Bay Area could be effectively
engaged to help with the HayWired team’s goal of better connecting with
under-represented communities and diverse cultural and ethic groups;
what priorities, interests, and concerns of these groups were and how those
issues could be best linked to the concepts addressed in the HayWired
scenario; and what the communication needs of the target audiences are
as well as what kinds of information products would best resonate with them.
The group of Bill Anderson Fund fellows who carried out the key project
activities included six doctoral students from three universities, all with different
disciplinary backgrounds and areas of expertise, who have
all demonstrated a commitment to addressing the needs of
marginalized communities facing hazards and disasters.
The project design sought to apply the core principles through a process
that started with working with our HayWired-affiliated partners
to clarify goals and identify priority stakeholder groups.
In other words, defining the target audience.
The fellows then developed an environmental scan database
that identified nearly 50 organizations that represented priority sectors for the
HayWired team and that reflected the fellows’ own interests and expertise.
These included energy justice environmental – energy justice
organizations, grassroots community groups, financial security programs
for low-income communities, mutual aid networks, cultural and
historical associations, and public and mental health organizations.
They used publicly available information to populate the database
and documenting organizational missions, populations served,
points of contact, communication channels used, and how the
organization’s activities might link to the HayWired scenario.
These organizations were identified as potential trusted messengers that
already had established communication pathways and trust with the target
audiences. And, in addition to collecting publicly available data,
three of the fellows were able to conduct interviews with a representative
of an organization in their category of interest to better understand their
organization’s activities and the needs of the clients or constituents.
As a next step, the fellows synthesized this qualitative data into organizational
design personas, which summarized key details needed to inform their
communication methods. They then used these personas to
guide their development of prototypes of six information products that
were tailored to the specific types of organizations and audiences
that they served. The products were intended to provide clear, concise
information about steps that could be taken to prepare for a large earthquake.
And these products expanded the approaches that the HayWired team
has previously taken toward communicating about the scenario
by utilizing innovative information pathways and formats.
A final report about this project is currently under development and
will be made publicly available via the Natural Hazards Center’s
website in the coming months. In the interest of time, I won’t go into
specific detail about the process, but I will share a few high-level
details about the project’s outputs.
The products that the fellows prototyped covered a range of target groups
and organizational types and took on different formats.
So briefly, as depicted here, these designs included an informational
video that was geared toward public and mental health organizations,
a phone and web application for community-based organizations,
and a set of instructions on how to build a flywheel, or a basic alternative
energy source that can be built using common inexpensive household objects
and used to charge a cell phone during a power outage.
And this product was tailored for use by energy justice organizations.
Another three products included a mascot called Geo the Bear, which
could be used by chambers of commerce as a spokesperson for the HayWired
coalition and outreach campaigns targeting small minority businesses.
Geo would carry a backpack containing materials and resources and could
integrate across all of the other fellows’ products.
Another prototype showcased how this concept could be used
by integrating Geo the Bear into a serious game with
a choose-your-disaster theme to be used by financial security programs.
The last product, featured on the right, was an infographic designed for
residents mutual aid groups, which have proliferated during
the COVID-19 pandemic, to help them prepare for scaling up
their efforts and utilizing their unique skills and approach
in response to a large earthquake.
These products, and the process through which they were developed,
will be discussed in greater detail in July
at the Natural Hazard Center’s annual workshop.
In conclusion, the Diversifying HayWired Communication project
showcased, through an abbreviated process, how the core principles of
risk communication can be utilized in a real-world science and
risk communication effort. The team’s experience in developing,
adapting, and implementing this project also generated some important insights
into the investments needed for effective risk communication, particularly with
regard to the need to dedicate sufficient time to engage in sustained outreach and
relationship building and about the need for flexibility and creativity in finding
ways to gather the necessary data while minimizing the burden
on communication partners. Finally, this opportunity to plug into
the larger HayWired scenario rollout effort highlighted how diverse teams
with awareness of and sensitivity to a broad range of issues and
populations can help with developing innovative approaches to risk
communication and with contributing to the kinds of inclusive coalitions
necessary to address inequitable distributions of risk.
With that, I’ll conclude my discussion. Thank you so much for your interest
in these issues and for your commitment to inclusion and
equity in disaster risk communication.
I look forward to discussing any questions during the live chat.