A Symbol Speaks 1000 Words: Assessing the Interpretation of Natural Hazard Icons

Icons are visual representations of objects, actions, or ideas, and are common in meteorology. They are frequently idealized for their potential to streamline and emphasize messaging, serving as visual cues or acting as shorthand. Messages with icons have the potential to increase accessibility for people who have limited English proficiency. However, may also represent a type of jargon for different populations, as different people have different interpretations of what a picture could mean. Although past work has tested how confident members of the public feel about the usefulness of icons to illustrate common weather phrases (Reed, Jasko, & Senkbeil, 2021), research assessing how people interpret icons that represent different natural hazards has yet to be done.
Indeed, there are several standardization boards for the structure and colors used for an icon, such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG), but not for the symbolic representation itself. This means that there is no standardization or consistency about how to visually represent hazards. Even within the same organization, different hazards may be represented with the same icon (e.g., identical “wave” symbols for flash flooding and flooding) or near similar icons (e.g., the same “gust” of wind as solid lines for wind advisory and dotted lines for dust storm).
Before developing more or different weather icons, we must first assess current icons and what they mean to audiences. To achieve this goal, we conducted a short survey with the public recruited via Amazon MTurk. We selected 27 different icons from the NAPSG collection for maps and GIS applications. Participants were asked in their own words what seven randomly assigned icons meant to them. With these results, we will demonstrate what weather symbols mean to the public.