Table Of ContentRisk Communication and
Community Resilience
Risk communication is crucial to building community resilience and reducing risk
from extreme events.
True community resilience involves accurate and timely dissemination of risk
information to stakeholders. This book examines the policy and science of risk
communication in the digital era. Themes include public awareness of risk and
public participation in risk communication and resilience building. The first half of
the book focuses on conceptual frameworks, components, and the role of citizens
in risk communication. The second half examines the role of risk communication
in resilience building and provides an overview of some of its challenges in the
era of social media. This book looks at the effectiveness of risk communication
in socially and culturally diverse communities in the developed and developing
world.
The interdisciplinary approach bridges academic research and applied policy
action. Contributions from Latin America and Asia provide insight into global
risk communication at a time when digital technologies have rapidly transformed
conventional communication approaches. This book will be of critical interest to
policy makers, academicians, and researchers, and will be a valuable reference
source for university courses that focus on emergency management, risk
communication, and resilience.
Bandana Kar is a Research Scientist in the National Security Emerging Technologies
Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
David M. Cochran, Jr. is a Professor of Geography in the School of Biological,
Environmental and Earth Sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi in
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA.
Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster Risk and Climate Change
Series Editor: Ilan Kelman
Reader in Risk, Resilience and Global Health at the Institute for Risk and
Disaster Reduction (IRDR) and the Institute for Global Health (IGH),
University College London (UCL)
This series provides a forum for original and vibrant research. It offers contribu-
tions from each of these communities as well as innovative titles that examine
the links between hazards, disasters and climate change, to bring these schools
of thought closer together. This series promotes interdisciplinary scholarly work
that is empirically and theoretically informed, with titles reflecting the wealth of
research being undertaken in these diverse and exciting fields.
Community Engagement in Post-Disaster Recovery
Edited by Graham Marsh, Iftekhar Ahmed, Martin Mulligan, Jenny Donovan
and Steve Barton
Climate, Environmental Hazards and Migration in Bangladesh
Max Martin
Governance of Risk, Hazards and Disasters
Trends in Theory and Practice
Edited by Giuseppe Forino, Sara Bonati and Lina Maria Calandra
Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives
Writing Haiti’s Futures
Kasia Mika
Climate Change Impacts and Women’s Livelihood
Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Salim Momtaz and Muhammad Asaduzzaman
Risk Communication and Community Resilience
Edited by Bandana Kar and David M. Cochran, Jr.
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Studies-in-Hazards-Disaster-Risk-and-Climate-Change/book-series/HDC
Risk Communication and
Community Resilience
Edited by Bandana Kar and
David M. Cochran, Jr.
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Bandana Kar and David M. Cochran, Jr.;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Bandana Kar and David M. Cochran, Jr. to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-08821-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-11004-2 (ebk)
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Contents
Acknowledgments viii
List of figures x
List of tables xii
List of contributors xv
List of abbreviations xxii
Introduction 1
BANDANA KAR AND DAVID M. COCHRAN, JR.
PART 1
Risk communication in the digital era 5
1 Text-to-action: understanding the interaction between
accessibility of Wireless Emergency Alerts and behavioral response 9
DEEDEE BENNETT AND SALIMAH LAFORCE
2 Bounded rationality and federal disaster recovery
information: understanding why access to information matters 27
JASON D. RIVERA
3 Public expectations of and responses to WEA message content 46
BANDANA KAR, DAVID M. COCHRAN, JR., JOSLYN ZALE, NICOLE E.
CALLAIS, AND XIAOHUI LIU
PART 2
Citizen participation in risk communication and resilience 65
4 River of difference: using participatory risk mapping to
assess perceived risks in Laredo, Texas, U.S.A., and Nuevo
Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico 69
ANDREW M. HILBURN AND THOMAS T. ZAWISZA
vi Contents
5 Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs): 30 years
as cross-sector forums for community risk communication 86
AVA M. CHRISTIE
6 Harnessing the power of social media for disaster risk
reduction and the mitigation planning process 104
SUZANNE L. FREW
7 Promoting public involvement in disaster risk
communication in Nigeria 123
OLUPONMILE OLONILUA
PART 3
Role of risk communication in resilience 135
8 Earthquake early warning systems: international experience 139
FRANCES L. EDWARDS, DANIEL C. GOODRICH, MARGARET HELLWEG,
AND JENNIFER A. STRAUSS
9 The role of social media in enhancing risk communication
and promoting community resilience in the midst of a disaster 165
KATHRYN E. ANTHONY, STEVEN J. VENETTE, ANDREW S. PYLE,
BRANDON C. BOATWRIGHT, AND CARRIE E. REIF-STICE
10 The Ports Resilience Index: a participatory approach to
building resilience 179
LAUREN L. MORRIS AND TRACIE SEMPIER
11 Advancing resilience post-disaster: improving designer–
user communication in the post-Lushan earthquake
reconstruction and recovery 198
HAORUI WU
PART 4
Challenges and future direction of risk communication 211
12 A case study of climate change, extreme weather events, and
risk communication in a coastal community 215
CHRISTOPHER A. CRAIG, ELIZABETH L. PETRUN SAYERS, AND SONG
FENG
Contents vii
13 Waves of change: coastal hazards, tourism development,
and risk communication along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua 235
MATTHEW L. FAHRENBRUCH
14 Risk and crisis communication in schools: understanding
current challenges and opportunities 249
TYLER G. PAGE, BROOKE FISHER LIU, HOLLY ANN ROBERTS, AND
MICHAEL EGNOTO
15 The use of social media in crisis communication 267
AMBER SILVER
Index 283
Acknowledgments
The publication of this book has involved the dedication, inspiration, and hard
work of many people over the last few years. We greatly appreciate our col-
leagues at Routledge who believed in this project from the beginning even when
it was little more than an idea. We are thankful to Faye Leerink for approaching
us about editing this book and guiding us through the proposal stage. We are
also deeply indebted to Ruth Anderson, who has been remarkably patient and
supportive of this project as we progressed from original proposal to published
volume. This book is part of the series, Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster
Risk and Climate Change, which, since 2015, has produced an impressive number
of insightful and cutting-edge studies. We great appreciate Dr. Ilan Kelman, the
editor of this series, for his support of our proposal and for his valuable feedback
in the early stages of the project. We are honored to have our book be part of this
distinguished series.
We also thank our 32 authors and co-authors who contributed their valuable
time and research results to the success of this volume. The fifteen chapters in this
book represent a wide range of themes that speak to the vitality and diversity of
the risk communication and resilience literature. We are grateful to the authors for
their patience and timely response to our requests.
For the past five years, we have organized paper sessions on Risk Communica-
tion and Resilience at the annual American Association of Geographers (AAG)
meetings. We are grateful to our presenters over the years and their thoughtful
comments that have contributed to how we have approached this book. We look
forward to sharing ideas and learning from other researchers on this topic of risk
communication and resilience at future AAG meetings.
We would like to thank the National Science Foundation (CMMI-1335187)
and the United States Department of Homeland Security (HSHQDC-12-C-00057)
for funding our work on risk communication and resilience on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast over several years. Their support provided the foundation for hiring
a dynamic team of researchers, including Dr. J. O. “Joby” Bass, and research
assistants, including Nicole E. Callais, James Dickens, Haley Feather, Lamar
Gillespie, William Kinkead, Cody Knuth, Xiaohui Liu, Abigail Smith, Matt Sum-
rall, and Joslyn Zale.
Acknowledgments ix
Lastly, we thank the readers of this book and hope they find inspiration in these
chapters to pursue new research pathways in risk communication and community
resilience.
Bandana Kar,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
David M. Cochran, Jr.,
University of Southern Mississippi
