Good practices of communication in disaster risk management

DRM consists of four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Communication plays a key role in each phase. Risk communication involves messages aimed at shaping people's understanding of hazards and their risk awareness, while emergency or crisis communication aims to minimise casualties and support rapid recovery during and after a crisis event. The European Union's Disaster Resilience Goal 2 emphasises the importance of increasing risk awareness and preparedness among the population. This flash report explores how civil protection authorities have improved their practices to increase the accessibility and understandability of risk and crisis information, and to overcome barriers to acting on such information.

On this topic, the flash report presents the following good practices:

Crisis preparedness app ‘Be prepared!’: smartphone application, developed by Estonian volunteers from the Women's Voluntary Defence Organisation, improves crisis preparedness among residents;

Situational awareness information system ‘SITREP’: online platform of the Estonian Ministry of the Interior to improve communication and coordination between crisis management agencies;

Location-based SMS threat alert systems: public alert system using cell broadcast technology to send alerts to all mobile phones in a given area during major emergencies;

‘Safe Village’ and ‘Safe People’ wildfire safety programs: safety protocols and education to increase community resilience to forest fires in Portugal;

‘You are part of the Norwegian preparedness’ campaign: campaign to increase risk awareness and preparedness for infrastructure failures;

‘I don’t take risk’ campaign: Italian public communication campaign to promote good civil protection practices to raises awareness of natural and man-made risks and encourages preventive behaviour.