Disaster risk communication organizational capacities at the age of extremes

<p>How is your organization preparing its organizational capacities for disaster risk communication in the age of extremes? A new study of the COPE project, led by the Cemaden (Brazilian Early Warning and Monitoring Center) and funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp), warned about three converging extremes that organizations must be prepared to face simultaneously:</p><p>- Weather extremes — intensified by climate change and accelerated by human action;<br><br>- Social extremes — inequality and racism that make some communities far more vulnerable to disasters;<br><br>- Digital extremes — disinformation spreading faster than official alerts on social networks and messaging apps;</p><p>The open-access article analyzed organizations' capacities to communicate disaster risk in the age of these three extremes. A literature review on the concept of disaster was carried out, as well as desk research in governmental publications about municipal civil defense and protection agencies, and qualitative field research in the second semester of 2024 in Cataguases City – Minas Gerais State and in Nova Friburgo City – Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, which are medium- and large-sized cities in the Paraíba do Sul River Basin. According to the results:</p><p>-municipal civil defense agencies lack financial and material resources, which compromises their communication capacity;&nbsp;</p><p>-the available human resources are also insufficient;&nbsp;</p><p>-there is a lack of training to address new risk communication challenges, such as disinformation about alerts spread on social networks and messaging apps, as observed during the field research;&nbsp;</p><p>-people do not know what extreme events actually are;&nbsp;</p><p>-despite these challenges, municipal civil defense agents develop communication strategies to address disinformation across social networks and messaging app groups.&nbsp;</p><p>Finally, the article highlights the need to analyze the communication capacities in place by monitoring the implementation of contingency plans. These plans must be resilient to intersections among these meteorological, social, and digital extreme scenarios.</p>