Why warnings fail

Related to this is the high expectation in terms of warning reach. Although some agencies have targets, like the British Environment Agency EA with its target of reaching 80 percent of the population at risk, there is a popular expectation that none will be missed. Increasingly, people expect very high performance from public agencies - perhaps higher than can be achieved - and missing 20 or even 10 percent of the people flooded could result in much embarrassment, especially if that group had media or political support.

From an agency perspective, it would be particularly unfortunate if those missed constituted an identifiable group such as non-english speakers or those living in an area for which no warning provision had been made. The experience of the EA in the Easter floods stands in contrast to the official performance goal. Very few people received a warning Bye and Horner, , identifiable groups were not warned Tapsell et al, , and areas were excluded from the warning system.

Areas excluded were protected by levees and therefore a low priority for warnings - however research orthodoxy has long been that such areas are at risk and need emergency planning including the provision of risk information Ericksen, ; Tobin, Australian experience suggests that often a relatively small percentage of those at risk will receive or recall receiving official warnings eg Handmer, - although many were warned through informal channels Parker and Handmer, It is also clear that warnings which reach all those at risk may, according to one's point of view: be ignored, or mislead through optimistic interpretation or failure to fully explain the inherent uncertainty in any warning - as appears to have occurred at Nyngan.

Much past assessment by the responsible agencies has concentrated on the accuracy of the predictions. Usually, some indicator of timeliness is included as well. With reference to some point, a satisfactory warning may be defined as one that gives at least x hours notice of a flood within specified parameters such as plus or minus y cm. The actual wording of a public warning will usually be more precise than this.

It might say: "The Muddy River is expected to reach 10 metres on the Rowing Club gauge by 6pm today," - thereby ignoring the considerable uncertainty surrounding this prediction. The details of acceptable accuracy and timeliness are generally kept by the responsible authority for its own assessments. This is useful to those developing prediction accuracy, but may be of limited value to those interested in the impact of the warning message. Even its purported accuracy may be misleading, as the predicted height is usually a point on a river as in the example above.

To give this meaning it must be interpreted to relate to the water spread away from the river. Crucial advice on how flood water will actually affect people, and on appropriate action, is often minimalist or missing. Many researchers - and some key officials within Australian and British warning systems - have argued that success should be seen in terms of the impact of the warning on reducing flood damages, as that is the reason for having warnings. For example, see the Australian and European cases set out in Handmer ; for earlier examples drawn from Australia see Smith and Handmer, For some of the officials consulted see the "Acknowledgements" section of this paper.

This approach has been a basis of much of the assessment work performed at the UK's Flood Hazard Research Centre eg, see Parker and Neal, , and is implicit in the concept of a "total flood warning system" as set out in Section 1. Although there is by no means universal agreement on this approach within flood warning organisations, the approach is increasingly employed in warning assessments.

It may be a very severe test. Taking action to reduce damages is a decision made by those at risk on receipt of a warning. A strong case can be made that the agency has responsibility to ensure that its message has meaning to the intended audience, but it is more difficult to assert that warning agencies should be responsible for people's decision making.

It highlights the conflicts in risk management between individual rights and the obligations to protect individuals from danger. Nevertheless, taking this view helps ensure that warning agencies strive to understand the needs of their audiences, and very importantly helps them justify their budgets by showing the economic benefits of warnings. A confounding factor is that warnings may be connected with household finances.

It is difficult to admit to ignoring a warning and then to expect aid in Australia or insurance payments in Britain. There is anecdotal evidence from discussions with flood victims that this factor has occasionally been significant in Australian and British floods. Post flood reviews, in for example Norway Killingtveit, and Britain Bye and Horner, , make the point see also Rohrmann, this volume.

To have any chance of "success" warnings need to have meaning which is shared between those who draw them up and those for whom they are meant to inform. They must also appear relevant to the individual decision-maker. This is no easy task given the distinctions between scientific-technological organisations and the "public" highlighted in particular by the emerging discipline of "sociology of knowledge" Jasanoff et al, Words and media are important, but so too are the diverse range of priorities and attitudes among those involved, the role of personal networks, and the characteristics of our dynamic fragmented societies.

A starting question for those designing and delivering warning messages is "what do those at risk need to know to reduce damages and improve their safety; and what is the best way of ensuring access to that information? Unfortunately, flood prone populations are usually very diverse making such understanding and subsequent message and delivery tailoring problematic.

This also highlights the difficulty of achieving percent coverage. It is not like advertising or health promotion where a decision may be taken to concentrate on only certain identifiable segments of the population, leaving others to be attended to later via a different communication strategy. It is difficult - if not impossible - to answer questions about local needs, priorities and access properly without consulting the people involved. The consultation should be a two-way process, more akin to negotiation, with the various stakeholders discussing their perspectives on the flood risk, and approaches to managing it.

In many areas local people may be unaware of the risk - a perception that will influence their response to warnings. The development of shared meaning through a negotiative process is consistent with the evolution of practice in risk communication generally towards the development of partnerships Fischhoff, Fully shared meaning cannot be achieved without a thorough understanding of the population at risk.

It is clear that such consultation has not taken place often enough. Warning messages are frequently written in jargon: in language that may mean a lot to those using the words but little to those for whom the message is intended. Some recent examples of which there are many include: the heavy use of jargon eg in Belgium, van Hassel and van Lindt, ; and the Environment Agency used a colour coded warning system which the post flood independent inquiry found was generally not understood: "Colour coded warnings appear to be misunderstood by nearly all who receive them The interests of the public are not well served by warnings given on the colour coded basis.

Flood warnings in Britain also used Greenwich Mean Time, however Britain was using summer time which resulted in needless confusion; and in the border regions of Belgium and the Netherlands, warnings were given according to different gauge zero levels, with the result that predicted flood levels differed substantially across the border van Hassel and van Lindt, Positive examples come from some areas of Australia where local emergency service groups identify key warning requirements which the warning agency tries to accommodate.

Also, the Dutch experience during the s was generally positive Rosenthal et al, ; see Section 2. Worse, even if achieved there are factors which may nevertheless undermine the warning process. The main points are set out in Table 3. Table 3: Reasons for failure whether shared meaning exists or not. Shared meaning may exist but is of limited value:. Shared meaning difficult to achieve: Typically the population at risk will be anything but homogeneous. This diversity may mean that there are different priorities, languages and levels of understanding.

Shared meaning may be achieved with some groups and not others. Related to population homogeneity is the problem of designing messages to have individual relevance and meaning. Some groups are largely excluded from most networks and they may not receive any warnings even where the system appears near perfect. Informal personal networks may reinforce, undermine or deflect official communications. There is also the opposite issue of hypersensitivity to rain after flooding.

This was seen following the floods in southwest Sydney Handmer, The scale of the problem is unknown. A question rarely asked in this context is whether modern communities are less interested in warnings or put another way: do the highly individualistic structure and priorities of modern society make it more difficult to achieve warning success - while increasing the likelihood of criticism and demands for compensation?

I do not have an answer for this question, but feel that it is extremely unlikely that the rapid evolution of western society is making the warning task easier. It is more likely that the atomisation and hyper-mobility of society is making it increasingly difficult to design and deliver effective warning messages to all those occupying or using a flood prone area. The enormous improvements in information technology over the last decade or so have yet to have any significant impact on communicating warnings to those at risk.

To function effectively, the groups must have some shared meaning and agreement on the warning task - or a lot of luck. The evidence from failures suggests that there is often neither, and that warnings agencies may see that their task is to provide a prediction or to be involved in some specific way in the warning process, but not to see themselves as directly serving the aim of warning those at risk.

As a result, many warning systems have no formal way of reaching those at risk. In some cases - including one inland Australian case in the late s - local warning plans contained no procedures for actually issuing a warning to those most at risk Handmer, Exclusion from warnings of some leveed areas in the UK has been commented on above. There is often reliance for dissemination on the mass media, but there are rarely formal arrangements with media to ensure that warnings are dealt with in a timely manner.

But, in some countries, for example Belgium, agreements with the media exist to cover this. In most jurisdictions faith must rest on discussion and informal agreement. In the very recent past in Britain, reliance for warning dissemination was placed on the Police based on an agreement now decades old and often ignored.

The British Police are increasingly looking after their core business and for most forces this does not include flood warnings. Ways are needed to improve this situation: that is the failure to conceptualise the warning task properly. There is a failure in practice to focus on what warnings are really for. Improvements may be sought through internal processes or through changes to the external operating environment.

Some options are explored in the following paragraphs. In Europe, some groups have been established at the international level where some of the more obvious failures of communication occurred , and at the interagency level, but the picture is very patchy. The British EA for example, has opted for an overarching "National Flood Warning Centre" which would develop the needed cooperation Handmer et al, Major changes are also occurring within the organisations operating warning systems. Managerialism or at least aspects of corporate practice have of course affected the organisations involved.

But much larger changes are at least possible even if not probable. Part of the warning process - or almost the entire process - could be contracted out, in effect privatised Handmer, One of the supposed advantages of this is that the tasks are specified very precisely and that performance measures related to these tasks are employed.

In theory, such an approach would focus the minds of warning providers. The assumption here is that the specifications would stipulate that warnings were to enable "individuals and communities to respond appropriately Another major change, independent of the role of government, would be development of appropriate warnings and associated emergency protection as a "human right" - as part of the gradual evolution of the concept of "safety" towards a "right".

Health and safety issues, very broadly conceived, have long been part of the European legal scene as part of the Commission's efforts to reduce social exclusion, and to promote industrial safety.

The "Seveso Directive" of the s marked the start of these efforts in a pan-European context - see Schuetz in this volume. The European Union has steadily extended the scope of these requirements for example through the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty the early s , and court decisions at national and European levels have given many aspects of safety the status of a legally enforceable right. A "right" removes many of the usual avenues for legal argument.

They became more commonplace when safety labels were required for food and drugs in Cigarette warnings entered the picture in the mids. Expansion of government requirements in the s made a warning labels a routine part of many consumer products, the researchers found.

Clearly the idea behind warning labels is an important one. Consumers need to be informed of possible risks before buying or using a product. In their paper, the researchers said a first step would be to stop branding products as dangerous if they represent only a marginal risk. A thought: If we can color-code homeland security threats, perhaps we could do the same with product-safety labels. Viscusi said warning labels also need to become simpler and more straightforward, which means ending the practice of jam-packing them with every last possible hazard.

In other words, the business would be shielded from disclosure-related lawsuits because federal authorities would have deemed its labeling adequate. Send your tips or feedback to david. The never-ending election: How to stop recurring campaign donations. People learn and people adapt. This is perhaps the fundamental property of human nature. The final answer to the question "Are Warnings Effective? There are documented examples of real-world warning effectiveness, but they are astonishingly few compared to examples where warnings failed to create any clear accident reduction.

This is hardly surprising given the contingencies, low probability and remote effects of most hazards, and by the opportunities for reduction in perceived risk by experience and by development of automatic behavior that completely removes risk from consideration. At the very least, it cannot be assumed that merely because someone calls a label or sign a "warning" that it will function that way - especially if the warning has not undergone scientific testing.

Always remember that function is not an innate property of any object, but rather is viewer-dependent. However each situation is different, so general conclusions are risky. In any specific cases, a proper analysis requires examination of the issues described above and elsewhere. In sum, a genuine examination of warning adequacy requires a thorough knowledge of human perception and cognition that can be applied to each specific instance.

Are Warnings Effective? Seminar Available on this topic. Introduction The typical product liability case once centered on a physical defect arising from a manufacturing flaw. The plaintiff would argue that the product broke or failed to work because of some physical defect, a departure from the stated specifications.

The expert analysis examined the materials, assembly process and other physical factors that contributed to producing the product. The notion of defect eventually broadened from physical defect to design defect. Even if a product behaved as advertised in fact, because the product behaved as advertised , it could still be held defective if the design exposed the user to injury. The expert analysis then examined a new set of factors, including the degree of risk, the product's utility and benefit, safer design alternatives, the difficulty of employing different designs, etc.

The most important issue, however, is whether the design takes likely user behavior into account. Since attorneys were used to having engineers handle product defect cases, they turned to these same experts to assess warnings and human behavior. However, the expert analysis examines factors such as visual conspicuity, attention, understanding, risk perception, behavioral trade-offs, user mental models, experience and attitudes. These are the domains of perceptual and cognitive psychology, not of engineering.

A proper expert must incorporate the total context: user experience, expectations, goals, limitations and predispositions. Unfortunately, many "experts" disembody behavior from its context and arrive at the wrong conclusion. The analysis of behavior toward warnings is a good example. At first glance, warning cases appear simple. A person uses a product.

He either sees the warning or not. If he sees it, he either understands it or not. If he understands it, he either complies with it or not.

When the issue reaches court, then the arguments usually focus on the warning's content and format: Were the colors correct?

Did it have the right words? Was there a symbol? This is an attempt to disembody the behavior from its overall context by focusing attention on one minute part of the entire situation. In fact, there is very little real evidence that these issues matter much in the real world.

Of course, the words in a warning must be legible and intelligible. However, content is only one small factor in determining warning effectiveness. The warning must exist in a context that supports it and renders it both credible and relevant. Here is a brief overview of some key issues: 1. People may misperceive the risk. Research studies find that people are poor at estimating "objective risk. As described below, however, "objective risk" is an oxymoron.

Risk is inherently subjective and is a function of many factors, including familiarity, sense of control, voluntariness, predictability, immediacy and several other variables. Risk is not an objective quantity.