With a surge in extreme weather events, Canada’s emergency alert system has been busy in recent years, seeing a growth of 175 alerts in 2021 to 980 alerts so far in 2023. Between wildfires, storms, floods, and heat waves, there are signs that this number will only continue to increase, according to The CBC. Despite this rapid increase, the system has generally worked well, although there is still room for improvement.
Speaking of the system, associate professor of disaster and emergency management at York University Jack Rozdilsky said to The CBC, “The technology, the operation, the perception and the confidence of the public in the system all need to work together for these systems to function correctly.” With the increased frequency of incidents, there are concerns about the technology itself. Says Rozdilsky, “Infrastructure we depend on can become fragile or damaged, such as electricity that powers internet devices or the towers that are needed to communicate. It would be foolish for us not to think of having backups for the backup.”,
Similarly, Jean Slick, professor of disaster and emergency management at Royal Roads University, said to The CBC, “We don’t want to be dependent on any one technology. What we want to do is have multiple channels of communication with people. And those multiple channels will be disseminated in different ways.”
Timeliness in messaging is also critical, which can also include communications about issues being tracked, to allow people to prepare should the situation shift to a warning. Said Slick, “There should be a plan on when to issue warnings — and within a plan, one of the things that you have are trigger points. And you have trigger points for different hazards.”
Importantly, concerns about warnings causing panics are almost always overstated. “What research shows is that human behaviour in disasters is almost — not completely, but almost always — pro-social,” said Slick. “People will help, they’ll support. They’ll do things to help each other, help themselves and help one another. You just have to give them the information.”
Source:
