Disaster risk communication

On this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNDRR, UNESCO and IFRC explored how reliable information, resilient media and local knowledge help communities understand risks and prepare for disasters.

A hands-on experience of disaster risk reduction helps equip the next generation for a resilient future.

A study found that updated hurricane forecast graphics help people identify inland watch areas but don't improve risk perception or protective intentions, highlighting the need for clearer local impact information to support safety decisions.

The Harmful Environmental Agendas and Tactics (HEAT) project examined climate-related misinformation and harmful narratives circulating across France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

This study analyses COVID-19 misinformation in South Africa, highlighting how continuous social listening and community-based communication can inform more adaptive responses to public health misinformation.

This article addresses how social listening can improve health crisis communication, highlighting the need to identify public concerns, tailor responses and continuously assess changing information needs.

This study examines how storytelling and cultural memory can strengthen risk communication in Alpine communities, helping translate hazard information into protective action, collective resilience and disaster recovery.

This study examines early warning messages in Ethiopia and South Africa, finding that direct recipients reported more complete warnings and were more likely to take protective action than those receiving information indirectly.

This study examines community-based climate risk communication in California, showing how locally driven information exchange can strengthen trust, collective action and resilience to multiple hazards.

A software error triggering a false magnitude 9.9 quake in Japan sparks fears that eroding public trust could cost lives in a real quake

The study looks into the existing gaps in the newsrooms of the selected editions of the Hindi-language newspapers reporting on the issues of climate change.

Households absorb much of the cost of disasters: Post-Disaster Needs Assessments from 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific put about 40 per cent of impacts in social and productive sectors. ESCAP sets out three government interventions.

Third season of Counter Crisis bridges the distance people closest to a disaster and decision makers about the money to respond. In each episode, the policymakers and the people living with their decisions are in the same conversation for the first time.

A survey by IRES for the Romanian insurers’ association UNSAR finds that 88 per cent of Romanians say they know how to react in an earthquake, but only 44 per cent have agreed a family plan and 40 per cent keep a first-aid kit.

The Indonesian government is working with Japan to broadcast earthquake early warnings through mosque loudspeakers, with trials planned in Jakarta and other regions by 2030 before nationwide rollout.

The Government of Lao PDR, supported by the United Nations, NGOs and CSOs, launch an inclusive risk communication initiative and a video competition on the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction to improve early warnings.

This study examines how Canadian emergency management organizations conceptualize and implement accessible risk communication

The application, named “Abhawa”, is designed to provide the public with easier access to official weather information and forecasts.

Inspired by the Menominee Tribe and Reservation in Wisconsin, the game tasks players with responding to floods, fires, droughts, and other extreme weather events.

This case study examines the current status of Bangladesh’s heat early warning system, outlining how heat risk is understood, monitored, and communicated, and how warnings prompt actions across institutions.

Research on post-alert messaging finds that after a false alert people need two things: assurance the threat is over, and a plain statement that they are safe. Attribution comes later.

This study examines household earthquake risk awareness and preparedness in Ghana’s Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, revealing high awareness but low preparedness. Education and prior tremor experience significantly predict readiness.

This study examines how serious games can support disaster risk management education, identifying design features that improve risk communication, learning and preparedness.

The Toolkit seeks to narrow the gap between climate science and climate action by providing insights, recommendations, and practical tools to support dialogue between scientists, decision-makers, and many diverse communities.

This primer offers actionable guidance for EU policymakers to combat climate disinformation – an issue they are increasingly confronted with and that can seriously impede their work.

This fact check debunks claims that High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program caused Colombia’s deadly earthquake, explaining that the disaster resulted from natural fault movement, not human activity or radio-frequency technology.

This article reviews barriers to inclusive emergency alerts, highlighting how limited language access, inaccessible channels and mistrust can prevent people from receiving and acting on warnings.

The chapter 4 "National security and stability" examines how journalism can reduce the harms of disinformation, showing how trusted news, fact-checking and media freedom support public resilience, security and stability.

A framework providing a universal taxonomy for natural hazard and climate risk and resilience assessments of infrastructure systems, defining Risk Classes, Resilience Classes and guidance for hazard, climate and infrastructure assessments.

This report synthesises social science evidence on climate adaptation and resilience for UK policymakers, highlighting adaptation as an ongoing social process shaped by people’s lived experiences, vulnerabilities, and social context.

The article explores the record-strength 2026 El Niño, its global impacts and links to climate change, while examining how terms such as “super El Niño” shape how scientists, media and the public understand extreme events.

This study examines communication for compound natural hazards in Australia, showing how listening, disaster literacy and creativity can support preparedness, response and recovery

This report synthesizes social science evidence on UK climate adaptation, showing how people-centered approaches can make resilience policy more effective, equitable and responsive to lived experience.

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the current alerting systems for hot and cold weather used in England to notify the health and social care sector of upcoming extreme weather events.

This article shows that it is vital to focus on who delivers the early warning messages. Messengers commanding high levels of trust need to be actively engaged to ensure information reaches people frequently and widely.

This report examines communication and engagement for compound natural hazards in Australia, highlighting the need for two-way, locally grounded approaches to strengthen preparedness and resilience.

Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola break down USGS ShakeAlert, earthquake early warnings, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and the technology that can warn people before strong shaking arrives.

Recurrent floods have forced Juneau to confront a problem that communities around the world are increasingly facing: How do you prepare for a natural disaster when you know it will come back?

This paper presents a framework for disaster communication capacity development that combines audience research, engagement and scenario-based vulnerability analysis to address barriers to accessing, understanding and acting on hazard information.

This study advances an equity-centered approach by centering informational equity as an underexamined dimension of disaster vulnerability. Findings show informational inequities emerge from systematic misalignments across the risk communication ecosystem.