Taking Effective Risk and Crisis Communication for Granted?

Communication has recently been highlighted as an essential function for weather forecasters as impending storms threaten communities, for scientists discussing the wide range of impacts of climate change, and for law enforcement officers issuing AMBER alerts to reunite missing children with their families. Calls for risk and crisis communication research, training, and implementation are up and it's not all that surprising. We need information to make informed decisions, and we value information differently based on its source, medium, timeliness and structure. In a competitive information economy, professionals cannot afford to assume communication effectiveness. Crises like those mentioned above can have great consequences, particularly when there are gaps between responders' communication efforts and information received by audiences who need it: such as during Hurricane Sandy.