Evaluating hazard awareness brochures: Assessing the textual, graphical, and numerical features of tsunami evacuation products

Abstract

Many people visit or live in areas that are exposed to natural or technological hazards but lack sufficient information to protect themselves when a disaster threatens. Hazard and emergency managers in federal, state, local and tribal government, as well as scientists and educators in tsunami warning centers, try to meet this need by providing essential information about hazards and appropriate protective actions. To date, however, there has been limited guidance for the preparation of hazard education products such as maps and brochures. Accordingly, this article reviews research on hazard education, warning systems, and warning response, as well as research findings on the communication of textual, numeric, graphic, and cartographic information in risk messages. This review produced an evaluation rubric comprising eight criteria—1) general evaluation criteria, 2) hazard-specific content, 3) environmental cues content, 4) hazard warning (sources/channels/messages) content, 5) preparedness actions content, 6) response actions content, 7) numeric information, and 8) maps. These criteria are illustrated by four experts’ evaluations of six tsunami evacuation products (TEPs—brochures and standalone maps). Although the small samples of raters and TEPs limit the generalizability of the results, this evaluation shows how hazard and emergency managers can assess the quality of preliminary TEP designs before conducting more scientifically rigorous evaluations using experimental or quasi-experimental designs.