Browsing by Author "Hudson-Doyle EE"

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    Community preparedness for volcanic hazards at Mount Rainier, USA
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2021-12-09) Vinnell L; Hudson-Doyle EE; Johnston DM; Becker JS; Kaiser L; Lindell MK; Bostrom A; Gregg C; Dixon M; Terbush B
    Lahars pose a significant risk to communities, particularly those living near snow-capped volcanoes. Flows of mud and debris, typically but not necessarily triggered by volcanic activity, can have huge impacts, such as those seen at Nevado Del Ruiz, Colombia, in 1985 which led to the loss of over 23,000 lives and destroyed an entire town. We surveyed communities around Mount Rainier, Washington, United States, where over 150,000 people are at risk from lahar impacts. We explored how factors including demographics, social effects such as perceptions of community preparedness, evacuation drills, and cognitive factors such as risk perception and self-efficacy relate to preparedness when living within or nearby a volcanic hazard zone. Key findings include: women have stronger intentions to prepare but see themselves as less prepared than men; those who neither live nor work in a lahar hazard zone were more likely to have an emergency kit and to see themselves as more prepared; those who will need help to evacuate see the risk as lower but feel less prepared; those who think their community and officials are more prepared feel more prepared themselves; and benefits of evacuation drills and testing evacuation routes including stronger intentions to evacuate using an encouraged method and higher self-efficacy. We make a number of recommendations based on these findings including the critical practice of regular evacuation drills and the importance of ongoing messaging that focuses on appropriate ways to evacuate as well as the careful recommendation for residents to identify alternative unofficial evacuation routes.
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    Enhancing scientific response in a crisis: evidence-based approaches from emergency management in New Zealand
    (16/01/2015) Hudson-Doyle EE; Paton D; Johnston DM; Marti, J
    Contemporary approaches to multi-organisational response planning for the management of complex volcanic crises assume that identifying the types of expertise needed provides the foundation for effective response. We discuss why this is only one aspect, and present the social, psychological and organizational issues that need to be accommodated to realize the full benefits of multi-agency collaboration. We discuss the need to consider how organizational culture, inter-agency trust, mental models, information management and communication and decision making competencies and processes, need to be understood and accommodated in crisis management planning and delivery. This paper discusses how these issues can be reconciled within superordinate (overarching) management structures designed to accommodate multi-agency response that incorporates decision-making inputs from both the response management team and the science advisors. We review the science advisory processes within New Zealand (NZ), and discuss lessons learnt from research into the inter-organisational response to historical eruptions and exercises in NZ. We argue that team development training is essential and review the different types of training and exercising techniques (including cross training, positional rotation, scenario planning, collaborative exercises, and simulations) which can be used to develop a coordinated capability in multiagency teams. We argue that to truly enhance the science response, science agencies must learn from the emergency management sector and embark on exercise and simulation programs within their own organisations, rather than solely participating as external players in emergency management exercises. We thus propose a science-led tiered exercise program, with example exercise scenarios, which can be used to enhance both the internal science response and the interagency response to a national or international event, and provide direction for the effective writing and conduct of these exercises.
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    The communication of uncertain scientific advice during natural hazard events
    (The New Zealand Psychological Society, 2011) Hudson-Doyle EE; Johnston DM; McClure J; Paton D
    During natural hazard crises such as earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic eruptions, a number of critical challenges arise in emergency management decision-making. A multidisciplinary approach bridging psychology and natural hazard sciences has the potential to enhance the quality of these decisions. Psychological research into the public understanding of different phrasings of probability has identified that the framing, directionality and probabilistic format can influence people’s understanding, affecting their action choices. We present results identifying that translations of verbal to numerical probability phrases differ between scientists and non-scientists, and that translation tables such as those used for the International Panel on Climate Change reports should be developed for natural hazards. In addition we present a preliminary result illustrating that individuals may ‘shift’ the likelihood of an event towards the end of a time window.