Common responses to the possibility of catastrophic events include “it won’t happen,” and “it may happen, but it
won’t affect me.”
Unsurprisingly, the relationship between hazard risk perception and willingness to undertake loss-
reduction measures is not a straightforward one, whether the unit of analysis under consideration is a household,
a business, or a community. Whether awareness and concern translate into action depends on a number of other
factors, including the capacity to act, where capacity is broadly understood as encompassing knowledge, belief in
the efficacy of loss-reduction measures, leadership, networked capabilities, and economic resources. Activity is
often context dependent; decisions made at higher levels of aggregation (e.g., the nation, the state and community
level) affect capacity and provide incentives for actions at other levels.
Risk Communication
The field of risk communication spans many types of risks in addition to those associated with hazards,
including in particular risks to life, health, and safety. The same general principles of effective risk communication
(and lessons learned from risk communication failures) are transferable across various domains. Hazards and
climate change have enough in common that lessons from the study of hazard risk communication should be
immediately transferable.
Experience and research on hazard-related risk communication suggest the following: (1) scenarios,
particularly those with visual impact, are good risk communication tools; (2) societal diversity is a critical
factor affecting trust in individuals, organizations, and institutions involved in communicating about hazards;
(3) ephemeral sources of communication, such as television and radio, are significantly less effective in
communicating about hazards than print media; and (4) the information technology revolution has had a major
impact on the risk communication process in several ways: that members of the public now have access to a
wide variety of information sources (including peer-to-peer and social networking communication technologies);
the distinction between information sources and information recipients has been blurred; and the role of more-
institutionalized “experts” and “authorities” has likely been attenuated.
At the same time, some institutions have managed to become trusted sources of information concerning
some hazards, particularly in the context of actual disaster events. For example, the National Hurricane Center, the
US Geological Survey, and the National Weather Service are highly credible sources of information on hurricanes,
earthquakes, and extreme weather events, respectively. In contrast, DHS appears not to have achieved credibility
in the area of terrorist threats, and pronouncements by agencies such as EPA and FEMA tend to be regarded
with suspicion (the “asymmetry principle” applies here: once trust is lost, it is very difficult to regain). Moves to
establish a National Climate Service within NOAA partly constitute efforts to identify a credible and trustworthy
source of information on climate-related issues.
Mitigation of Negative Impacts
The hazards and climate change communities unfortunately use the term mitigation in two different ways.
In the hazards area, the term refers to actions that can be taken in advance of disaster events to reduce disaster
impacts and losses or to avoid them entirely. Hazard mitigation measures include the relocation of communities or
parts of communities, land-use policies, building code adoption and enforcement, and the retrofitting of hazardous
structures. Mitigation is viewed as one phase in the cycle of disaster management; the other three phases are
preparedness, response, and recovery. In the climate change field, the term mitigation refers to measures designed
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while the term adaptation is used to describe activities that reduce the effects