excluded or feel disillusioned with learning. For example, Preston (2012) posits that ‘there are both tacit and overt reasons why disaster education shares racial inequalities in common with other forms of formal (and informal) education’. He shows that although there are diverse forms of disaster education they are inextricably linked to a range of inequalities in society.
One way to counter this power inequality issue is through another learning relationship. ‘Heutagogy’ is the study of self-determined learning and draws together some of the ideas presented by these various approaches to learning. It is also an attempt to challenge some ideas about teaching and learning that still prevail in teacher-centred learning and the need for ‘knowledge sharing’ rather than ‘knowledge hoarding’.
Rogers (1969) suggests that people want to learn and have a natural inclination to do so throughout their life. Indeed, he argues strongly that teacher-centred learning has been grossly overemphasised.
A heutagogical approach recognises the need to be flexible in the learning where the ‘teacher’ provides resources but the learner designs the actual course he or she might take by negotiating the learning. Thus, learners might read around critical issues or questions and determine what is of interest and relevance to them, and then negotiate further reading and assessment tasks.
The heutagogical approach has potential for disaster learning as it relates to informal and incidental education. It ties well with the concept of ‘shared responsibility’ (Council of Australian Governments 2011) where both emergency agencies and at-risk people have responsibilities before, during, and after disasters. Coupled with these responsibilities is the requirement for people to learn themselves, although there will be times (e.g. early warning) when emergency agencies need to provide direct advice (e.g. the need to evacuate).
2.2 Disaster Communication
Communication is the act of transferring information from one place to another. It can denote two different processes:
the transmission of information (a one-way process)
sharing information (a common or mutual process).
In disaster management, the transmission model (one-way process) is primarily used where there is information disseminated by emergency agencies for alerts and warnings. In contrast, the idea of sharing information implies a common or mutual process. The use of social media as an emergency communication tool inherently involves two-way information sharing.
Disaster communication can be categorised according to the length of the communication period. ‘Acute’ communication occurs during emergencies where there is a need for rapid dissemination of lifeline information. On the other hand, ‘long-term’ communication occurs over an extended period prior to and after emergency events or disasters, e.g. disaster risk reduction, post-disaster reconstruction.
However, according to Steelman and McCaffrey (2013), the two fields that best inform communication thinking for a hazard are risk communication and crisis communication.
2.2.1 Risk Communication
2.2.1.1 Risk
Risk represents the potential for loss as a result of the impact of natural, technological, and other hazards (see Chapter 1). More specifically, risk can be defined as ‘a situation or event in which something of human value (or humans themselves) has been put at stake and where the outcome is uncertain’ (Jaeger et al. 2001).
There are two main categories of definitions of ‘disaster risk’.
1 Disaster risk is a combination or function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. ‘Hazard’ is defined in Chapter 1. According to UNISDR (2017), ‘exposure’ is ‘the situation of people, infrastructure, housing, production capacities and other tangible human assets located in hazard-prone areas’. UNISDR (2017) defines ‘vulnerability’ as ‘the conditions determined by physical, social, economic, and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards’. Exposure describes what could be harmed by hazards while vulnerability explains why it is in harm's way (Kelman 2018).
2 The combination (sometimes as a product) of the probability of an event and the consequences of the event.
Although there are these two categories of definitions, ‘the core concept within the definition of “disaster risk” does not really change over time or across different references, referring to overlapping notions of either: (1) possible losses from a hazard; or (2) potential adverse consequences in a disaster’ (Kelman 2018).
As with the disasters they produce (Chapter 1), disaster risks are socially constructed primarily through pre-existing vulnerabilities. However, this does not disregard that there are risks in the physical world (Rosa and Clarke 2012).
Vulnerabilities that create, cause, and make the disaster are present waiting to be uncovered prior to any hazard. And the vulnerabilities linger through the post-disaster recovery, long after the hazard has diminished. For example, the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina ‘arose out of a combination of place-based vulnerability and ecosystem, built environment and social vulnerability’ (Tierney 2014).
Further exploration of disaster risk and vulnerability, and their implications for disaster learning, is provided in Chapter 5.
2.2.1.2 Risk Perception
The extensive body of research on risk perception helps to clarify people's innate biases and provide insights into how cultural, social, and emotional factors shape actual perception of risk. These learnings can then be translated to make risk communication more effective.
Knowledge, experience, values, attitudes, and feelings all influence the thinking and judgement of people about the seriousness and acceptability of risks.
The mental models and other psychological mechanisms which people use to judge risks are internalised through social and cultural learning and constantly moderated (reinforced, modified, amplified, or attenuated) by media reports, peer influences, and other communication processes (Morgan et al. 2001).
According to Renn (2008), there are two main approaches to the study of risk perception:
1 The ‘realist approach’. This approach aims to bring perception as close as possible to the actual risk of an activity or an event. It assumes that there is an outside objective world with risks that we can recognise and acknowledge (Rosa 2008). The solutions to problems of perception are then simply ones of more information and a greater understanding of the risk (Wachinger and Renn 2010).
2 The ‘constructivist approach’. Constructivists argue that risks are not objective but that they are subjective and socially constructed (Jasanoff 1998). That is, they are models which allow people to cope with non-reoccurring phenomena (Wachinger and Renn 2010).
Why might the public view hazard risk differently to experts such as emergency managers? People are often presented with a large amount of information (e.g. on potential hazards) and require some way of weighing up that information if they want to reach a conclusion about relevant risks. In general, the public relies on what are called ‘heuristics’ or – more commonly – rules of thumb. Heuristics are quick, informal methods that the brain uses to generate an approximate answer to a problem and allows people to quickly make sense of a complex environment (Renn 2008).
However, using heuristics can also result in biases, where risk perceptions are out of kilter with risk assessments by emergency agencies or other authorities. For example, if someone has experienced a hazard