Hamilton Bean: Documenting U.S. Public Warning Failure: Early Findings from the Warning Failure Database

Time

15:00 CET

About

Alert Conversations are a series of webinars / online talks organized by Cost Action AlertHub, an European funded research network, aiming to facilitate international collaboration and knowledge transfer among scholars and practitioners whose work involves warning communication and disaster management. In this edition, Hamilton Bean will focus on the Warning Failure Database (WFD), that systematically documents instances in which U.S. public warning systems have failed to meet their objectives. The WFD applies standardized coding to capture technical, organizational, and message-design breakdowns, alongside contextual factors such as hazard type, alerting authority, affected populations, and downstream consequences. This presentation shares early findings from the 2015–2026 pilot dataset of 50 verified cases, illuminating recurring patterns, causes, and equity implications of warning failure. The presentation explores how the WFD can inform alerting policy, system design, and interagency coordination.

Background

Hamilton Bean is a Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver and an internationally recognized expert on disaster warning systems and public alerting. His research focuses on how warning messages are designed, governed, and interpreted across technological, institutional, and cultural contexts, with particular attention to mobile public alert and warning systems. Dr. Bean has led and contributed to multiple interdisciplinary research projects examining the effectiveness of Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), message clarity, public trust, and decision-making during imminent threats. His work has been funded by agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Japan Foundation, and has informed policy discussions at multiple levels. He is the author of Mobile Technology and the Transformation of Public Alert and Warning and has consulted with government agencies on evidence-based public warning communication practices.