The ultimate purpose of risk communication is to reduce the amount of risks that people are exposed to by providing them the information they need to make better, more informed decisions.

Every child has heard the warnings, "Don't touch that stove; it's hot!" or "Look both ways before you cross the street!" To the same effect, emergency management professionals hope to effectively communicate risk to change behavior in order to prepare communities and avoid or reduce the impacts of emergency situations.

Combating "Cry Wolf" Syndrome

As a culture, we've grown numb to many of the most common forms of risk communication messaging, such as emergency testing announcements on radio and television. We also live in a world where we're constantly bombarded by over-hyped messaging. As a result, if warning of a pending "severe" or "extreme" event goes out and nothing bad happens, it's easy to write it off as hype, rather than being thankful we may have dodged a bullet.

But what happens when a real emergency occurs? How do we get people's attention? Most understand the warnings associated with a Class 5 hurricane or impending tornado, but aren't as informed about the warnings of less well-known events such as floods, fire, and avalanches, or events harder to predict such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

For those of us tasked with communicating risk, we'll always face the reality that the general public may ignore our professional opinion. We need to convey the risk in a way that gets results, not "cry wolf" and be ignored. That's the challenge—getting people's attention amidst all of the noise and providing the right information at the right time so people can make good decisions for their own safety.

Creating a Risk Communication Program

Having a good risk communication program is vital for public safety. We need to get people's attention before the first raindrops fall with the leading edge of a hurricane, or a wildfire reaches the end of the street. It's too late to prepare for an earthquake when the first jolt hits, or a tsunami when the wave hits the shore.

With today's technology, we have advanced warning of such events, but we also need a program in place that's tried and tested, to get the information out to the public—to effectively communicate risk so people know what's coming and what they can do to protect themselves.

Looking both ways before we cross the street is still a good start.