Disaster tales as innovative risk communication tools

Recent major flooding events occurred in Italy and abroad demonstrate the communication potential that videos and pictures taken by citizens have on risk perception and disaster preparedness. Agencies in charge of the flood... [ view full abstract ]

Recent major flooding events occurred in Italy and abroad demonstrate the communication potential that videos and pictures taken by citizens have on risk perception and disaster preparedness. Agencies in charge of the flood management, use Disaster Reports (DR) as the preferred source of information to release after events. A systematic survey (o review?) of DR prepared by Italian agencies and of the DR standards adopted in some flood-prone countries suggest that DRs could be widely enhanced by targeting communication to citizen information needs and preferred sources of information. To this aim, new communication strategies are needed to improve the resilience of the population to extreme events. Without loss in rigour and detail, we suggest “Disaster Tales” as innovative communication tools to increase knowledge about the events and improve residents’ preparedness and self-protection behaviours. A crucial aspect to address is the link between the memory of past events and the places as they look today. The increasing availability of disaster web amateur videos, already used in newspapers storytelling, can represent an asset to strengthen the disaster tale. These videos allow to collect qualitative and quantitative technical information and to improve disaster stories and reports, thanks to the geo-tagging, time-stamping, and per-frame metadata. In this way, by watching and listening what has happened (sometimes including real-time comments by the recording author) the communication recipient can better understand the feelings of the people experiencing an emergency situation. It is suggested that a careful compilation of information and feelings can consistently improve communication strategies aimed at increasing awareness and self-protection skills of people living in disaster-prone areas.