Risk communication

This article reports public reactions to a UK emergency phone alert on wildfire risk, highlighting concerns over alert fatigue, unclear guidance and the need for effective crisis communication.

Most wildfires started by humans are still being called "wild", placing the fire outside human society. It implies there was no spark – and certainly no humans, and fails to widen the cause to include climate change, calling for new naming conventions.

Wildfire misinformation spreads fastest in the hours right after a fire breaks out — checking a claim against a credible source before sharing it is the simplest way to slow it down.

The issue is how to avoid readers assuming that a fire is the whole story, when the event is, just the moment at which a long process becomes attention grabbing. When reporting stops there, it is accurate about the day but misleading about the decade.

This report examines climate disinformation during 2026 heatwaves and wildfires, showing how recurring false narratives on social media undermined public understanding of extreme weather risks.

Chiefs in Ontario say they were left to self-evacuate before homes burned to ground, after being told there was no imminent threat.

Forest fires will continue, meaning we need ongoing investment in prevention, land management and firefighting resources. But we also need to pay more attention to human behaviour.

This publication explores how generative language models combine social media, news and weather data to detect disasters quickly and accurately, using satellite data to validate results from flood and wildfire case studies.