Early stage risk communication and community engagement(RCCE)strategies and measures against the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic crisi

Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic has proven to be tenacious and shows that the global commu nity is still poorly prepared to handling such emerging pandemics.Enhancing global solidarity in emergency preparedness and response,and the mobilization of conscience and cooperation,can serve as an excellent source of ideas and measures in a timely manner.The article provides an overview of the key components of risk communication and community engagement(RCCE)strategies at the early stages in vulnerable nations and populations,and highlight contextual recommendations for strengthening coordinated and sustainable RCCE preventive and emergency response strategies against COVID-19 pandemic.Global solidarity calls for firming govemance,abundant community participation and enough trust to boost early pandemic preparedness and response.Promoting public RCCE response interventions needs crucially improving government health systems and security proactiveness,community to individual confinement,trust and resilience solutions.To better understand population risk and vulnerability,as well as COVID-19 transmission dynamics,it is important to build intelligent systems for monitoring isolation/quarantine and tracking by use of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems algorithms.Experiences and lessons learned from the international community is crucial for emerging pandemics prevention and control programs,especially in promoting evidence-based decision-making,integrating data and models to inform effective and sustainable RCCE strategies,such as local and global safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and mass immunization programs.

Influence Factors Concept Model for Public Participation in Nanotechnology Risk Communication

Based on risk social cognition theory and planned behavior theory, the influence factors of the public participation in the nanotechnology risk communication are analyzed,and the concept model is presented to analyze their relationships and functional mechanism. In the model,the risk communication behaviors are divided into two variables of the public opinion expression and information acquisition,and the subjective norm divided into the internal and external social networks. Then the questionnaire is designed so as to verify the proposed model and analyze their relationships. The survey data are analyzed using SMART PLS software. The validity analysis shows that the questionnaire has a high convergence and discriminant validity. In addition, the Cronbach'a coefficient of each item is more than 0. 70,which shows the questionnaire has a high credibility. Based on the statistical data analysis, relationships of the influence factors are obtained.Further,the influence path model of the public attitude,intention,self regulation and behavior control in the risk communication is established. According to the Bootstrap algorithm in SMART,the path coefficient and its explanation variance of each influence factor are obtained. The calculation results show that the explanation variance values are all bigger than 10% and the path is reliable.Based on the path model, the influence path and function relationships of the participation attitude, subjective norm and behavior control on the participation intention and behavior are obtained. This will provide theoretical and data supports for the risk management and strategy making of the public participation in nanotechnology risk communication.

COVID-19 Vaccine, Asymptomatic Cases, Risk Communication and Community Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa

African region will probably be the last region in COVID-19 vaccine uptake. But that shouldn’t be a problematic issue if the emphasis is maintained on the role Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) can play in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic through the adoption of preventive measures. We used the issue of asymptomatic cases to illustrate the importance that should still be given to preventive measures such as hand washing, mask wearing, physical and social distancing, knowing that vaccines have never been 100% effective. Also with the issue of variants in COVID-19, the vaccine couldn’t be considered as a panacea. Lessons from the Nordic countries are strong arguments to put emphasis on preventive measures in the region.

Risk Communication and External Emergency Plan in Angra dos Reis, Brazil

The presence of a potentially hazardous facility in a community demands several safety procedures. Bringing risk communication among those actions may help the population that lives near the facility feel more confident and have the required knowledge on how to behave in an emergency situation. A research performed in Angra dos Reis, RJ, Brazil, where a nuclear power plant is located, shows that there is a lack of information and awareness about the emergency plan.

The Establishment of a New Air Health Index Integrating the Mortality Risks Due to Ambient Air Pollution and Non-Optimum Temperature

A composite Air Health Index(AHI)is helpful for separately emphasizing the health risks of multiple stimuli and communicating the overall risks of an adverse atmospheric environment to the public.We aimed to establish a new AHI by integrating daily mortality risks due to air pollution with those due to non-optimum temperature in China.Based on the exposure-response(E-R)coefficients obtained from time-series models,the new AHI was constructed as the sum of excess mortality risk associated with air pollutants and non-optimum temperature in 272 Chinese cities from 2013 to 2015.We examined the association between the“total AHI”(based on total mortality)and total mortality,and further compared the ability of the“total AHI”to predict specific cardiopulmonary mortality with that of“specific AHIs”(based on specific mortalities).On average,air pollution and non-optimum temperature were associated with 28.23%of daily excess mortality,of which 23.47%was associated with non-optimum temperature while the remainder was associated with fine particulate matter(PM2.5)(1.12%),NO2(2.29%,),and O3(2.29%).The new AHI uses a 10-point scale and shows an average across all 272 cities of 6 points.The E-R curve for AHI and mortality is approximately linear,without any thresholds.Each one unit increase in“total AHI”is associated with a 0.84%increase in all-cause mortality and 1.01%,0.98%,1.02%,1.66%,and 1.71%increases in cardiovascular disease,coronary heart disease,stroke,respiratory diseases,and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mortality,respectively.Cause-specific mortality risk estimates using the“total AHI”are similar to those predicted by“specific AHIs.”In conclusion,the“total AHI”proposed herein could be a promising tool for communicating health risks related to exposure to the ambient environment to the public.

The Importance of Preserving Birds and Their Habitats at Hanford Site and Oak Ridge Reservation: Information and Communication Tools for Governments, Local and Diverse Communities and Others

The Department of Energy (DOE) has one of the largest environmental remediation tasks in the world, cleaning up the radiologic and toxic contamination legacy of nuclear weapons production. DOE has committed itself to accomplish remediation “while protecting human health and the environment”. Many DOE sites are huge, encompassing habitats that are ecologically valuable because they have been protected from human disturbance for 70 years or more. Yet information on the importance of DOE lands for protecting specific ecological resources is often buried in volumes of data. In this paper, we examine the importance of DOE lands as habitats for birds using two sites as examples: the Hanford Site and Oak Ridge Reservation. Our overall goal was to provide a model for communication of key information useful for the public and decision-makers. Birds are conspicuous and familiar features of the landscape, and bird populations are important indicators of habitat quality. As future land use plans evolve, birds can convey important messages about habitat uniqueness and conservation importance and recreational values of designating DOE land for conservation, but only if they are in accessible formats. At the semi-arid Hanford site, shrub-steppe is an important habitat outside the Columbia River corridor. At the wet Oak Ridge Reservation eastern deciduous forest, interior forest is a particularly important habitat. There are different groups of bird species dependent on each habitat. We use two methods for each habitat: 1) a comparison of historical written records and 2) a comparison of land use/land cover data. Habitat loss through development, fragmentation, and degradation is one of the most important causes of avian decline. Importantly, we present the data in a manner suitable for discussion among diverse audiences regarding future use of sites now undergoing remediation. The Hanford Site has recorded 205 bird species, including shrub-steppe species of regional importance. The Oak Ridge Reservation has recorded 213 species of birds, including Neotropical migrants of international concern. In both cases, their respective habitat is key to protection of the unique avian assemblages, and there is a higher percentage of these habitats on the DOE lands than in the surrounding habitats. Our analysis also concludes that these habitats that are of high importance to the rare and declining avian assemblages are mostly increasing on the DOE sites as the once agrarian landscape has reverted to more natural habitat. Since acquisition, DOE has developed about 10% of the land for nuclear and industrial activities, leaving the rest of it as a security buffer for the nuclear production mission. The tables provided in this manuscript can serve as valuable tools in communicating the importance of these lands and protecting these lands for surrounding communities. We commend the DOE for its protection of ecological resources for the regions and the Nation, applaud their mechanisms for ecological protection, and recommend that more of each site’s respective unique and important habitats be designated as preserved in perpetuity as valued ecological resources. This designation entails communicating with Tribes, communities, government agencies and organizations, and the public about the ecological value of their protected lands.

The contribution of maps to the challenges of risk communication to the public

Risk communication is a significant challenge in risk management.It serves different purposes;an important one is to improve the public risk awareness and mitigation.Because of the strong spatio-temporal component of natural hazards,maps can play a decisive role in communicating risk information.The application and design of maps for risk communication especially to the public has not been investigated comprehensively.Specific constraints and challenges of risk communication have not been considered systematically in the map design process so far.This study aims at developing a frame for the application and design of interactive risk and hazard maps for the public which is based on the specific constraints and challenges of risk communication.In a literature review it introduces concepts and methods from social sciences and psychology,which have been assessed as important for communicating risk information.The concepts and methods are adapted to map-mediated risk communication according to the approaches of Activity Theory.Communication objectives and tasks which are essential to improve risk mitigation are identified and geovisualization methods for information presentation are related according to the degree which they are able to serve them.Based on this,some principles for map-based risk communication are established.

Assessing relevance of tweets for risk communication

Although Twitter is used for emergency management activities,the relevance of tweets during a hazard event is still open to debate.In this study,six different computational(i.e.Natural Language Processing)and spatiotemporal analytical approaches were implemented to assess the relevance of risk information extracted from tweets obtained during the 2013 Colorado flood event.Primarily,tweets containing information about the flooding events and its impacts were analysed.Examination of the relationships between tweet volume and its content with precipitation amount,damage extent,and official reports revealed that relevant tweets provided information about the event and its impacts rather than any other risk information that public expects to receive via alert messages.However,only 14% of the geo-tagged tweets and only 0.06% of the total fire hose tweets were found to be relevant to the event.By providing insight into the quality of social media data and its usefulness to emergency management activities,this study contributes to the literature on quality of big data.Future research in this area would focus on assessing the reliability of relevant tweets for disaster related situational awareness.

Health and Risks:Integrating Health into Disaster Risk Reduction,Risk Communication,and Building Resilient Communities

In recent years,‘‘health’’has been recognized explicitly as both a determinant and an outcome of the human dimension of disaster risk reduction(DRR).Every disaster creates significant public health needs that can exceed local capacity to respond,resulting in excess mortality and morbidity.The European Union report on Science

Semiotic Resourcefulness in Crisis Risk Communication: The Case of COVID-19 Posters

The unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 presents a public health crisis on a global scale.Various measures have been taken to communicate crisis risks to the general public.These measures are meant to keep the public well informed,stay alert,and take precautionary measures to help curb the spread of the virus.The current study is part of an ongoing project aimed at exploring patterns of communication in the COVID-19 crisis discourse.Based on a collection of posters designed for public use during the outbreak,this paper analyses the richness of semiotic resources that combine to construct and convey the intended message of the posters.Drawing from scholarly insights into understanding the situatedness of meaning-making,the paper revisits some of the classical concerns about the relationship between text and image in semiotic artefacts and reveals the meaningmaking patterns in the semiotic designs of risk communication posters.The patterns are found to rest upon a host of textual and graphic features that contribute to the essential semiotic encoding of entity,condition,action,and sentiment.The findings are summarized by conceptualizing the assemblages of resources in the poster as a semiotic ensemble where the coordination and collaboration among semiotic resources can work to reduce potential ambiguities and amplify the communicative effect.

Emergence and Development of Health Risk Communication Networks Among Street-Level Health Bureaucrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis in Myanmar

Street-level health bureaucrats have actively contributed to implementing the COVID-19 prevention,control,and treatment policies of the Myanmar government.However,the need for bureaucrats on the frontlines of policy implementation to maintain a safe distance from others to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has posed challenges for the sharing and exchange of information related to health risks.In this context,this study examined what health risk communication patterns have emerged and developed among streetlevel health bureaucrats during the COVID-19 pandemic,and how this risk communication has been affected by streetlevel health bureaucrats'perceptions of client meaningfulness and willingness to implement COVID-19 policies.The results reveal that street-level health bureaucrats in the health risk communication network are embedded in reciprocally or transitively connected discussion relationships that sustain their health risk communication over time.Moreover,when specific healthcare staffmembers perceive more benefits of COVID-19 policies for their patients and are more willing to care for patients,other healthcare staffavoid them to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection.Due to their higher level of understanding of the adopted measures,healthcare staffmembers who are highly willing to implement COVID-19 policies are frequently approached by other staffmembers to communicate about COVID-19 issues.This study empirically contributes to the literature on street-level bureaucrats in times of pandemic crisis by examining the formation of health risk communications in the context of street-level health bureaucrats'responses to and participation in public healthcare policy implementation processes.

Risk communication in the post-Fukushima era

In the long-term phases,clear risk communication in the post-Fukushima era is necessary and significant.It is the most urgent in this post-accident phase is for residents to access to all the information available within the scope of current knowledge in order to support their life decisions.For full recovery,authorities,specialists,international organizations,media,and the public will need to work together.The speed of innovation in risk communication should catch up to the development speed of the internet.Long-term communication will be necessary.Learning about the Fukushima nuclear accident experience is essential for the prevention and risk communication of possible accidents in the future.

Conflicting Discourses on Wildfire Risk and the Role of Local Media in the Amazonian and Temperate Forests

This article examines how risk is communicated by different actors,particularly local print newspapers and actors at the community level,in two different geographical contexts that are severely affected by wildfires—the Brazilian Amazon and Atlantic Spain.We analyzed how wildfire risk is framed in local print media and local actor discourse to elucidate how wildfire risk is interpreted and aimed to identify the main priorities of these risk governance systems.The main findings reveal that the presentation of wildfire as a spectacle is a serious obstacle to the promotion of coherent risk governance and social learning,which involves recognizing wildfire risk as a social,political,economic,and environmental problem.Proactive risk governance should communicate the multifaceted nature of risk and stimulate dialogue and negotiation among all actors to build consensus regarding land use and the creation of risk.

Appetite for Natech Risk Information in Japan:Understanding Citizens'Communicative Behavior Towards Risk Information Disclosure Around Osaka Bay

Effective risk communication is essential for disaster risk management.Apart from empowering communities to make informed risk choices,risk information disclosure can also drastically enhance their disaster preparedness,especially concerning conjoint scenarios of technological and natural hazards(Natech).A fundamental precondition is the actual demand for such information.This study ventures to assess whether residents around Osaka Bay have this demand,or"appetite,"for risk information disclosure,as well as to understand their communicative behavior and perceived challenges in the Japanese context through the prism of the Situational Theory of Problem Solving.To test this framework under realistic conditions,data were collected through a household questionnaire survey from two urban areas near industrial complexes in Osaka Bay.The results show that identifying Natech risk information deficiency as a problem was not a statistically significant predictor for individuals'motivation to communicate.However,their motivation increased as their perceived personal involvement with the situation rose,while the perceived obstacles in doing something about it exerted a negative influence on their motivation.Individuals'motivation intensified their communicative actions to solve this problem.Public segmentation underscored the elevated public perceptions concerning the issue of risk information deficiency in nearly nine out of ten respondents.These findings indicate a strong community appetite for chemical and Natech risk information,which subsequently led to high situational motivation to engage in communicative action,particularly information acquisition.Risk management policy is suggested to focus on introducing chemical risk information disclosure regulatory initiatives to encourage citizen engagement.

Less attention paid to waterborne SARS-CoV-2 spreading in Beijing urban communities

SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in various environmental media.Community and individual-engaged precautions are recommended to stop or slow environmentally-mediated transmission.To better understand the individual’s awareness of and precaution to environmental dissemination of SARS-CoV-2,an online survey was conducted in Beijing during March 14–25,2020.It is found that the waterborne(especially wastewater mediated)spreading routes are far less perceived by urban communities.The precautions for wastewater transmission are less favored by the public than airborne and solid waste mediated spreading routes.Such risk communication asymmetry in waterborne transmission will be further enlarged in places with fragile water system.Furthermore,education level is the most significant attribution(Sig.<0.05)that causes the difference of awareness and precautions of the waterborne transmission among the respondents,according to the variance analysis results.Our survey results emphasize the urgent need for evidence-based,multifactorial precautions for current and future outbreaks of COVID-19.

Synergistic Integration of Detailed Meteorological and Community Information for Evacuation from Weather-Related Disasters: Proposal of a ‘‘Disaster Response Switch’’

Meteorological information used for disaster prevention has developed rapidly in terms of both type and specificity.The latest forecasting models can predict weather with very high resolutions that can characterize disaster risk at the local level.However,this development can lead to an overdependency on the information and a wait-and-see attitude by the public.At the same time,residents share and use various types of information for disaster response,such as local conditions,in addition to official disaster information.Our research in Japan verified the practicality and efficiency of synergistically integrating these types of information by examining actual evacuation cases.The current numerical forecasting models sufficiently identify locality from the viewpoint of various administrative scales such as prefectures,municipalities,and school districts,but the improvements to these models have failed to improve residents’judgment in successful evacuation cases.We therefore analyzed the relationship between meteorological information and residents’disaster response and confirmed that they were strongly correlated and were contributing factors in preventing disasters.We revealed differences between a community’s disaster prevention culture and the disaster information provided.This led us to propose a new concept in community disaster prevention that we call the‘‘disaster response switch,’’which can serve as a data-driven risk management tool for communities when used in combination with advanced meteorological disaster information.

Towards personalised public warnings: harnessing technological advancements to promote better individual decision-making in the face of disasters

Official warnings are essential for informing the public of impending hazards and promoting their responses before a disaster occurs.However,research has identified that traditional public warnings,such as generic text messages based on large geographic regions,often fail to promote appropriate responses by at-risk residents.Recently,there has been an increased focus on using map-based approaches for communicating public warnings.However,a systematic framework to guide the design of effective mapping instruments for this purpose is lacking.The researchers sought to fill this gap by merging the scholarly understanding of factors influencing warning effectiveness with the contemporary spatial capacities of the emergency management sector.The current paper presents the conceptual framework resulting from this merger,which can be used to direct the design and implementation of map-based warnings that offer personalised risk visualisation and provide personalised decision support to motivate appropriate responses.An example is then provided to illustrate how this framework can be applied for the development of personalised bushfire warnings in an Australian context.Underpinned by webGIS technologies,the proposed framework shows a potentially ground-breaking approach to improve public warning communication by fostering more efficient and effective risk personalisation and response related decision-making by individuals.

Food safety in Vietnam:where we are at and what we can learn from international experiences

Food-borne diseases are attracting a lot of attention in Vietnam as a result of repeated episodes of adulterated and unsafe food.In this paper,we provide some perspectives on food safety in Vietnam from the point of view of an international research institution working on food safety with partners in the country.We argue that one of the key issues of food safety in Vietnam is that certain food value chain stakeholders lack ethics,which leads to the production and trading of unsafe foods in order to make profits irrespective of adverse health effects on consumers.In turn,the shortfall in ethical behaviours around food can be attributed to a lack of incentives or motivating factors.Although food safety causes panic in the population,it is unclear how much contaminated food contributes to the burden of food-borne diseases and food poisonings in Vietnam.However,globally,the biggest health problem associated with food are infections from consuming food contaminated with viruses,bacteria or parasites.A major food safety challenge is the inappropriate way of communicating food risks to the public.Another key constraint is the inherent difficulty in managing food in wet markets and from smallholder production.On the other hand,local foods,and local food production and processing are an important cultural asset as well as being essential to food safety,and these aspects can be put at risk if food safety concerns motivate consumers to purchase more imported foods.In this paper,we also discuss good experiences in food safety management from other countries and draw lessons learnt for Vietnam on how to better deal with the current food safety situation.