| Abstract |
Successful emergency management decision-making during natural hazard events is fundamentally dependent upon individual and team situation awareness (i.e., how selection, interpretation, and understanding of available information defines the problem and identifies solutions) while operating under high time and risk pressures. The development and evolution of SA, and response effectiveness during a crisis, depends upon information and advice from external experts. This advice is characterised by stochastic (system variability) and epistemic (lack of knowledge) uncertainty, constraining decision-making and blocking or delaying action. How this uncertainty is communicated, and managed, varies throughout the phases of emergency management. Through this 'Insight' paper, we review how people cope with uncertainty, individual and team factors that affect uncertainty communication, and inter-agency methods to enhance communication. We propose communicators move from a one-way dissemination of advice, towards two-way and participatory approaches that identify decision-relevant uncertainty information needs pre-event, for communication efforts to focus on in-event. |
