Abstract
The increasing regularity of climate change impacted weather patterns and events (e.g., heatwaves, extreme precipitation) is a communication challenge for weather forecasters and emergency managers who are tasked with keeping residents safe during often unprecedented situations. Weather models have inherent uncertainty, and the ability for potentially life-saving information to get to the people who need it most (e.g., those who need to evacuate) remains a challenge despite the proliferation of digital access to information and social media sites like Twitter. It is also unclear the role that community-based organizations and super-local governmental entities play or may play during weather events in transmitting weather information and providing assistance. In New York City, as in many cities across the globe, there remains robust inequality, with communities who are historically disadvantaged often suffering the highest number of deaths and level of destruction following weather events.
The New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) office is tasked with overall management and coordination of response efforts to emergency events that occur within the five boroughs of New York City: the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island. And while the importance of an organization like NYCEM cannot be overstated, it should be acknowledged that in the case of a city-wide emergency in New York City, NYCEM is responsible for communicating with and managing more than eight million residents. Focusing only on improving the city-wide emergency management agencies (NYCEM) communication in the run-up to a storm ignores the potential impact of hyper-local organizations with deep roots and strong network ties in specific communities in New York City. Of course, it is not clear whether or not these types of community-based organizations perceive themselves as playing a role regarding weather-related communication. Yet, it is also in understanding how leaders in these organizations think about weather communication that we may be able to identify specific challenges and opportunities for improving weather communication, particularly in an era of climate change impacted events.
This research study, based on 26 interviews with community leaders in New York City, examines the perceived challenges and opportunities in effective weather communication in highly vulnerable communities. Identified challenges included a lack of access to information for members of the leaders’ communities, language barriers, a general lack of access to resources, and an overall sense of distrust of the city and local officials. Concerning whether community leaders felt their organization played a role in weather communication, the majority of participants noted that while their organizations didn’t prepare novel weather communication messages, they did act as intermediaries, sharing and passing on the messages from entities like the National Weather Service and NYCEM, to members of their community. And finally, while no questions were asked about Hurricane Sandy, 65% of participants (n=17) brought up the storm unprompted, suggesting that more than 10 years later, this storm in particular remains an important focal point for extreme weather for residents of New York City.
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