Description

Risk communication, defined as the exchange of information among stakeholders about a disaster with the intent to help people take risk reduction actions, is a central part of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Resilience is a process that increases capacity through the proactive and positive engagement of stakeholders so that disaster-impacted communities can quickly return to a pre-disaster state or even attain better-than-pre-disaster states, thereby enhancing sustainability. While risk communication is one aspect of building resilience, community resilience also can be improved by (i) increasing public awareness of risk and their role in risk reduction, (ii) assessing risk, (iii) increasing stakeholder participation in policy preparation and implementation, and (iv) sharing knowledge/information/lessons learned among communities. The collective experience of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Florence indicate that social media plays an increasingly important role in disseminating information for preparation, response, and rescue. In light of these and other disasters, it is timely to discuss what actions should be taken to integrate citizen science, crowdsourcing, and risk communication in building resilient communities.