A Warning Lexicon to Assist You in Issuing Warnings

An often repeated “warning” I’ve shared in this blog is that the first place where emergency managers get in trouble with a disaster response is in issuing a warning. Many times, it is a “failure to warn” that starts the process of screwing up a disaster response. Citizens are not very forgiving of an agency that failed to warn of a potential or impending warning.

With the above in mind, see this great tool that should be in every emergency manager’s toolbox, The Warning Lexicon: A Multiphased Study to Identify, Design, and Develop Content for Warning Messages

It is a reminder that there are so many good resources available for our emergency management community to take advantage of. We don’t ned to try and reinvent the wheel when research and information is already readily available.

But then—you still need to “pull the trigger” on executing the warning! On that issue, I’d rather be shot for trying to do the right thing, than being blamed for doing nothing.  See below for more information on the Warning Lexicon.

This abstract will give you a quick overview of the tool:

Emergency managers and alert and warning originators require tools to build effective warning messages. The purpose of this research is to develop one such tool—a Warning Lexicon—that can be used to construct consistent warning messages for Wireless Emergency Alerts. Specifically, the Warning Lexicon systematically establishes a common set of statements about hazard impacts and their associated recommended protective actions that can be used to quickly write effective warning message contents. Thus, the Warning Lexicon allows practitioners and risk communicators to (1) write effective warning messages at the time of the threat, (2) reduce message issuance delay, and (3) develop templated messages as part of their preparedness process. We built the Warning Lexicon through a theoretically informed, multiphased mixed methods process of content analysis and subject matter expert review to verify the accuracy of lexicon statements and validate the language used to instruct message receivers about protective actions. The resulting content incorporated into the Warning Lexicon includes 48 hazards, their associated impacts, and 112 protective action statements spanning atmospheric, technological, biological, and human-induced events. The result of this project is a comprehensive, theory-based, expert-informed, and practitioner-reviewed resource to support the composition of warning messages for imminent threat events.

Jeannette Sutton one of the authors of the tool shared the link above.