Every once and a while, we take a peek at the types of messages that a state or jurisdiction is sending to the public and find something interesting... Georgia sure does send a lot of road closure messages. It's almost as though the local and state alerting authorities are using WEA as a public notification service about traffic conditions rather than saving the channel to alert for imminent threat events. We don't really know why the state and local public safety officials have opted to make use of WEA for this purpose and we're hopeful that it has had a limited impact on engagement/willingness to keep WEA turned on. During a recent IPAWS webinar, when RAND shared preliminary results from their study following the national test in fall 2023, we heard that Georgia is among the states where 15-20% of the population surveyed has opted out. Could it be partly due to their use of WEA for road closure notifications?
Regardless of their impact, we can still improve these messages. In fact, in a recent study on Alert Fatigue that I'm working on with colleague Michele Wood from Cal State Fullerton, we are finding that emergency managers who issue alerts and warnings believe that incomplete, non-actionable alerts drive disengagement in ways similar to messages that are irrelevant to message receivers. So, let's get to work.
We know that an effective alert will include 5 key pieces of information. This is based upon 5 decades of social science research. This includes:
source - who is issuing the message
hazard - what is the threat/risk/event and what impact does it have on people
location/population - who is at risk from the hazard
time - when is it occurring or by what time should people take action
guidance - what should people do about this threat.
We can apply this to the message examples posted above. The top message is missing the message source and the time of action. The bottom message is missing the hazard and its impact on travel, and protective action guidance (other than how to get more information) and the time of action. The use of ALL CAPS in most of the message posted by GDOT makes it appear like they are SCREAMING at the reader; GDOT is an acronym that may not be understood by the message receiver.
While WEAs for road closure notices are clearly necessary in some cases, routine paving/construction activity seems like it might be a bit of a stretch. Its not clear why GDOT was issuing a message about 1-75 SB.
In writing these blogs, our hope is that persons with authority to write and issue alerts will consider how they write their messages, but also under what conditions those messages should be issued. In the future, it is possible that road closure and traffic WEAs can be directed only to in-vehicle alerting; that would cut down on the number of mobile devices being activated for persons not on the road. But until then, we need to remember how precious this channel is for reaching people when there are no other alternatives. Making wise choices about when to use it is imperative for all of us.
For more recommended contents, be sure to download The Warning Lexicon - it's free and offers step-by-step instructions on how to write a better warning message.
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