Emergency warnings : choosing your words.

Purpose of an emergency warning -- Guiding principles -- Structure of an emergency warning -- Language to use.

Australian governments and the broadcast media industry have been working to develop and implement consistent arrangements for the request and broadcast of emergency warnings. This guide is part of that ongoing work. It recognises the need for emergency service personnel and management to have more information on the most effective way to draft warnings. The guide was developed by reviewing the available literature on this issue, conducting interviews with academics and experienced incident coordinators, and identifying words in current usage in Australia and overseas. This research was followed by qualitative focus testing in Australia of recommended and/or commonly used words. The guide contains information about the specific words that, in the testing conducted, best conveyed the relevant concepts of warning messages. In most cases, several alternatives are provided to allow flexibility in wording sentences to suit particular warning situations. This guide is not intended to contradict or determine local guidelines and systems. Rather, it is intended to provide advice on choosing the most effective words to convey particular concepts. It provides specific word choice advice to complement existing systems for the issuing of warnings. Groups of words are provided to convey changing degrees of seriousness or probability. These groups reflect intuitive ?levels? for the community and can be selectively used to match any existing categories or scales used by emergency management authorities. The most appropriate wording for a variety of scenarios and incident levels should be regularly considered in planning and included in training programs. The information in this guide can be used in conjunction with the expertise of the emergency services in local circumstances to develop the best possible ?template messages?, which can be quickly amended and used in times of emergency. The effectiveness of this guide and related issues will be reviewed as part of the ongoing consultation between the Australian Government and State and Territory governments on the implementation and management of the national guidelines and broadcast levels for public emergency warnings.