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Private warnings:

Paradigm shifts in forecast communication and

decision-making

Yoshiyuki Tomiyama, 2019

Weather Environment Education Center, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract

The increased and diversified risks associated with climate change make it urgent to

enhance the adaptability of society. Given these risks, the key players are individuals,

individual businesses and institutions. The adaptation of by those who are users of

weather and climate information and make use of information for their own risks is

referred to as personal approach to safety. Privates are the decision-makers using this

approach. This paper uses “private” as a noun that denotes a decision-maker

accountable for one’s own risks. Privates need support focused on themselves. The

support function is referred to as risk-care. Risk diagnoses are one of the functions of

risk-care to identify hazards that may cause risks for a private. Currently, decision

theory in economics has been reformed by several important contributions, including

those of Kahneman (2002 Nobel Prize in Economics) and Thaler (2017 Nobel Prize in

Economics). New theories of decision-making assume that human judgements are not

always based on rational components. Personal approaches to safety requires new

paradigms of forecast communication and decision-making. This paper attempts to

apply new thinking for these decision-making approaches. Private warnings are the

pieces of information used to trigger of responses in emergencies; and are central to the

paradigm shift of communications. An example will be shown for a case when these

paradigms were applied to a medical center, and what the center could do when faced

with a hurricane threat.

__________________

Corresponding author address: Yoshiyuki Tomiyama, Weather Environment Education Center, 3-17

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Kandanishikicho, Tokyo, Japan

E-mail: rakufuh@tg.commufa.jp

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1. Introduction

“What makes Katrina particularly perplexing” for the Weather and Climate Enterprise

(hereafter referred to as WCE), J. Rosenfeld, the editor general of the Bulletin of the

American Meteorological Society (BAMS) at that time, wrote, “is that forecasting

accuracy achieved such a triumph” (Rosenfeld 2005). It is often said that safety from

natural disasters depends mainly on the WCE’s ability to provide accurate, reliable and

timely forecasts. However, an accurate forecast is insufficient for effective decision-

making (e.g., Katz and Murphy 1997; Pielke and Carbone 2002). It is well known and

has been studied frequently that there is a serious gap between forecast progress and

societal safety (e.g., Hooke and Pielke 2000; Morss et al. 2008). Nevertheless, it is

difficult to say that we have completely overcome the dogma of accurate, reliable and

timely forecasts. This paper refers to this dogma as the accuracy myth.

Despite the ubiquity of weather information availability, users cannot effectively make

use of it at present (e.g., Meyer et al. 2014; Morrow et al. 2015). On the other hand, the

imminent threats associated with climate change (e.g., IPCC 2018; Steffen 2018) require

individuals, individual businesses and institutions to play a role in their own safety. This

is a key to enhancing the adaptability of society. McNie et al. (2016) discussed a user-

based approach (McNie et al. 2016). Brotzge and Donner (2013) called attention to

personal mitigation that would be able to reduce tornado damage. This paper uses the

phrase, personal approach, to denote voluntary responses of individual forecast users to

their own risks. It is important to distinguish the user-focused perspective from the

perspective that sees users as a collective entity. Both the latter perspective and the

accuracy myth are associated with a top-down approach to safety. Therefore, the personal

approach is a challenge to the accuracy myth as well.

While traditional theory assumes that people will act rationally (e.g., Dash and Gladwin.

2007; Millner et al. 2009), real-world decisions are rarely based on this. It is apparent that

this assumption cannot apply to the personal approach. As a result, traditional theory

detracts from real-world applicability (Stewart et al. 2004). Currently, the contributions

of Kahneman and Thaler have reformed decision theory in economics. Kahneman (2002

Nobel Prize in Economics) and Tversky proposed a new decision theory and showed that

human judgements are not always based on rational components (Tversky and Kahneman

1974). In medicine, trials for shared decision-making between clinicians and patients

viewing health care from a patient viewpoint have started. This paper will apply new

theories of decision-making to the personal approach for safety and propose alternative

paradigms for forecast communication and decision-making.

The next section will propose a new paradigm of decision theory. Section 3 explains

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private warnings that will play a central role and their communication. Section 4

discusses a case where these paradigms are applied to a medical center, and what such a

facility could do when faced a hurricane threat. The final section is dedicated to the

summary and discussion.

2. Decision-making

a. Decision-makers

The personal approach is a bottom-up approach and focuses on individual users to

study forecast communication and decision-making. This paper refers to the view of

individual users as the personal view and to the view of users as a collective as the public

view.

Top-down approaches, such as structural measures, information infrastructure and

regulations to protect the public, are designed for the public view. Forecasts have a spatial

view to describe meteorological events, while covering habitable areas depending on their

resolutions. While warnings are event-focused information, they have a public view.

We know little about how users perceive risks. Both the public view and spatial view

cannot resolve a user’s viewpoint, where the personal view is in the blind spot. The issue

of warning compliance refers to limited responses including evacuation due to warnings

(e.g., Dash and Gladwin 2007, Lindell et al. 2007). The root cause of this issue lies with

the fact that warnings have a public view. The public view remains a personal view, and

therefore risks in the personal view occupy a blind spot. Because of the diversity of risk,

the public approach can turn into public tyranny if it is uniformly applied to every forecast

user. Blindly requiring compliance to warnings is such a case.

The top-down and bottom-up approaches are complementary measures for safety from

natural disasters. However, the latter lags behind. Some people believe that if a disaster

strikes, the government will help them out (Haddow et al. 2013: 86-7). Therefore, instead

of trying to do what a person can do individually, he folds his arms and waits for the entire

nation to come to his rescue (Tocqueville 1835: 110).

People often escape responsibility for their own risks and watch things go by. When a

devastating tsunami followed by the Higashinihon Earthquake impacted the community

of Miyagi Prefecture, it claimed 700 lives out of 5,600 residents. NHK TV produced an

excellent documentary, reporting the behavior of residents at that time (NHK 2011).

According to this documentary, most residents did not recognize the threat from the

tsunami. They seemed to lack a sense of emergency, and took no voluntary actions. Their

behaviors seemed to be led by a mob psychology. There was a man who had received a

tsunami warning via car radio. He, in a loud voice, called on people who had gathered

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around an open space to evacuate. People neglected him. Someone even said, “I want to

go home.” In the emergency, they behaved as if it were somebody else’s responsibility. If

they had acted more appropriately, there were chances to survive. Facing a tsunami

threatened their lives, yet they seemed to be indifferent to their own fates.

Ultimately, every person and business is responsible for their own risks. However, only

a few of these participants are aware of the risks. When a forecast user makes up his mind

to take the risk and adapt to it, he becomes an agent with accountability. Instead of leaving

one’s fate to others, a person tries to make a decision for oneself. This paper uses the word,

private, to denote individual residents, businesses or institutions who are decision-makers

with accountability. Therefore, “private” is a noun. The personal view remains a

possibility until a user becomes an agent with accountability. Therefore, it is not the user’s

view but the personal view that can substitute for the public view. While the concern of

the public view is public risk, the main concern of the personal view is the private specific

risks. This is referred to as the private risk.

b. Risk-care

For the private approach, the knowledge of privates and their abilities come to the

center of the problem. Most privates have never experienced any training for decision-

making. Privates seldom know their own risks. They seldom know which forecast they

can use or what they can do based on a forecast to respond to risks.

Studies of the risk responses of forecast users usually assume the following: 1) users

know their own risks; 2) users know what information they should use; 3) users

understand and correctly interpret this information; 4) users know the stakes and possible

consequences of their decisions; 5) users know affordable response actions; and 6) users

have the ability to make rational decisions. This is analogous to, in medicine, assuming

that patients have knowledge of diseases and drugs and have the ability to choose the

appropriate drugs. For this assumption, forecasts are like the drugs displayed on the

shelves of drugstore. Such an assumption is excluded in medicine from the beginning.

Patients can buy only those pharmaceuticals prescribed by a doctor.

Medical care has a function called primary care. It is a function that provides “person-

rather than disease-focused” medicine (IOM, 2012: 2-3). A primary care provider is “a

point of first contact” (IOM, 2012: 2-3) where patients can receive diagnoses and patient-

focused treatments (with pharmaceuticals in many cases). A patient who is not feeling

well can visit a clinic to obtain primary care. In contrast, what is the situation of a private

to prepare for risks? Whom can he visit to obtain support?

The personal approach to safety needs a functional equivalent to that of primary care

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in medicine. This paper calls the function risk-care, which is crucially lacking in our

society. A society can and should support privates in their response to risks. The personal

approach to safety will require a new culture of safety in which each individual takes

responsibility for his response to disasters. It represents a paradigm shift in safety

measures from a culture in which the primary responsibility for safety is taken by the

authorities. The personal approach to safety is not laissez-faire but is underpinned by

professional support. Risk-care plays a vital role in providing privates with professional

support for this.

External forces that may adversely affect human societies are called hazards. This

paper is limited to natural forces. Private risks are so divergent that the hazards that cause

these risks do not always coincide with those that cause risks for the public. This is

because exposures and vulnerabilities to hazards are different between a private and the

public. Exposure means that one is under the influence area of a hazard. Vulnerability

means the degree of being damaged by a hazard (e.g., Wisner 2003; UNISDR 2011).

Emergency management is not the main profession of most privates. Risk-care should

provide privates with professional support including: 1) diagnosing the hazards that may

affect a private; 2) identifying the information by which a private perceives the

imminence of a hazard; and 3) recommending response actions to each private.

Scientific disciplines that are relevant to risk-care include meteorology, disaster

sciences, civil engineering and architecture, which presently work in isolation. The

integration of these disciplines for establishing the science of risk-care needs to be

explored. Therefore, our society currently has no human resources for risk-care. However,

the job requirements for risk-care do not necessarily involve a knowledge of all of

relevant sciences but instead involve the ability to work together with a variety of

specialists to meet the function of risk-care.

c. Smart decision-making

Traditional decision theory has thought too highly of the rational reasoning of decision-

makers in their cognition and judgement. In contrast, research by social scientists over

the past four decades “has raised serious questions about the rationality of many

judgments and decisions that people make” (Thaler 2008: 8). In practice, individual

decision-making is subject to a variety of heuristics and biases (Tierney et al. 2001: 29;

Kahneman 2011: 89). Heuristics are the systems of human judgment that work

automatically and without rational reason (Kahneman 2011: 89).

The decision problem for the personal approach requires a new paradigm beyond

traditional decision problems. Referring to Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993), Pielke wrote

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about “post-normal science in which ignorance appears to overwhelm knowledge, yet

decisions will nonetheless be taken” (Pielke 2012). Kahneman and Tversky “challenged

a fundamental tenet of economics—the notion of the rational actor—and replaced it with

a more realistic description of how humans actually think” (Khong 2017).

Kahneman recommended risk policy for decision-making in emergencies. He wrote

“they would do better by having a risk policy that they routinely apply whenever a

relevant problem arises” (Kahneman 2011: 340). One should determine a default option

by deliberative thinking in normal times and apply it automatically in an emergency.

Thaler has replaced traditional decision theory with behavioral economics. In his theory,

nudge thinking, which aims at better behavior by means of well-prepared choices takes

the place of decision by rational reason. The response action to apply in emergencies does

not have to be the result of rational reason but only needs a well-prepared choice as a

default option. Another default option to be well-prepared is information on how

imminent a hazard is.

These choices are prepared in the course of a dialogue between a risk-care provider

and a private. The former offers choices and describes their risks and benefits, and the

latter expresses his preferences and tradeoffs. This type of decision-making is called

shared decision-making (SDM) in medical services (Barry and Edgman-Levitan 2012).

SDM between a private and a risk-care provider followed by the identification of private

risks is a process of communication in which risk-care providers and privates work

together to determine the information to understand the how imminent a risk is and to

determine response actions in the case of an emergency.

Decision-making that individual privates make under the support of risk-care is

referred to as smart decision-making to distinguish it from traditional types of decisions.

Smart decision-making is compatible with the personal approach.

Smart decision-making is characterized as follows (see Table 1). While traditional

decision problems aim an optimal resolution, a smart decision aims at a baseline that is

possible for everyone. While traditional decisions assume that decision-makers act

rationally, smart decisions do not require any special knowledge or abilities for a private

except for the awareness of the accountability for their own risks.

Traditional decision problems assume that decision is made in real time, i.e., at the time

of the emergency. Instead, the decision processes for smart decision-making consist of

two phases: the shared decision-making by a private and a risk-care provider in normal

times, and the response action by a private for himself in an emergency. Shared decision-

making in normal times determines the information for understanding how imminent a

risk is and the response actions as the default option. When a private receives the

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information, he will automatically start a response action that has been determined in

advance.

The traditional theory of decision-making in an emergency starts from monitoring

information (e.g., Morrow 2015). This is a necessary process to know whether one needs

to make an emergency response or not, but most will fail at this first step. In smart

decision-making, privates are freed from working with this uncertainty. This is because

the information to use as a trigger for a response is determined in advance. This

information is referred to as a private warning.

Thaler wrote, “If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government

will be both smaller and more modest” (Thaler 2008: 15). The personal approach for

safety will reduce governmental responsibilities and, at the same time, improve the safety

of society.

3. Communication

a. Risk diagnoses

The personal approach requires that a private knowns the private risks and hazards

that cause risks for him. Risk diagnosis is a social function to meet this requirement. It

is one of the functions of risk-care; similar to when a person who is feeling sick visits a

clinician to obtain a diagnosis, a private can receive a risk diagnosis from a risk-care

provider.

The hazards that cause risks for a private are identified by a process of risk diagnosis,

which consists of an exposure evaluation and a vulnerability assessment. Risk-care

evaluates the exposure of a private to a comprehensive list of hazards. If the external

forces of a hazard extend to a private, he is said to have exposure to this hazard. A private

is to be considered as having exposure to a hazard when its forces extend to the private.

Usually, a private is exposed to multiple hazards. The hazard list includes not only

meteorological events such as storms and floods, but also other forces associated with

natural events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and wild fires.

Assessment of exposure proceeds by superimposing the location of a private onto the

extension of each hazard. The degree of exposure can be measured, for example, using

the return period to a certain threshold of scale (e.g., Burton and Cutter 2008; Grothmann

and Reusswig 2006). Next, diagnosis proceeds to vulnerability assessments for each

exposing hazard. If the buildings or facilities of a private are robust enough in the event

of strong winds, one has no vulnerability to them. Whether a private has vulnerability or

not depends on the scale of the hazards. Vulnerability assessments require expert skills to

examine preventive capabilities including the robustness of buildings and facilities.

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The Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 11 March 2011 caused a

nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operated by the Tokyo

Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which was eventually rated at International Nuclear

Event Scale 7. The power plant was damaged due to the loss of on-site power caused by

flooding, followed by a loss of the cooling function for the reactor units (IAEA 2015).

Earthquakes are another hazard to which the Fukushima Daiichi plant has exposure. The

Number 2 plant of this station may have been damaged due to the Earthquake before it

lost cooling (Tanabe 2017).

A simple measure to eliminate exposure for a private is to change location.

Vulnerabilities can be reduced by the preparedness of privates including the

reconstruction of buildings, improvement of facilities and enhancing responsive abilities.

A private has risks from hazards to which he not only has exposure but also

vulnerability. These are the private risks. He should prepare for every hazard that may

cause a risk to him. Usually, different hazards require different preparations.

Before diagnosis, most privates do not know which hazards pose risks, much less how

to prepare for them. For example, when Typhoon Jebi (JMA 2018) affected Kansai

International Airport on 5 September 2018, this event revealed that the Kansai Airports

Company was not aware of the risk from storm surges. This was also the case for the

Bellevue Hospital Center in New York when it was affected by Hurricane Sandy (Blake,

E. S. et al. 2013) in October 2012. The next section will describe this case in detail.

The importance of risk diagnosis is clear for housing developments. The risk of newly

developed housing falls on 1) the buyer of house without knowledge of risk; 2) the real

estate developer who fails to sell the houses; 3) the insurer who sells services to the

housing owner without the knowledge of excess risk; or 4) the public that supports the

residents when they lose houses. These risk takers could be encouraged to consider risk-

based alternatives. If the developer knew the risk, he could have developed other safer

places. If the insurer knew the risk, he could have imposed higher premiums. These

alternatives could reduce the need for public expenditures.

b. Private warnings

The most important consideration for a private to respond to risks is to judge whether

an emergency exists or not. Smart decisions make this consideration unnecessary by

receiving private warnings. Private warnings are private specific information to inform a

private that a hazard is imminent. In the context of tornado warnings, Brotzge (2013)

referred to personalization of the warnings and their communications to individuals.

Although private warnings are an extension of this thought, they do not attempt a

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personalization of certain warnings but instead provide a choice of information

appropriate to the privates’ responses to risks. This approach does not impose any

additional work for WCE.

For the first version of a private warning, this choice will be limited to the information

that is provided by the public sector and to which everyone has ready access. This means

that the implementation of private warnings is not a problem of new development of

forecasts but rather a problem of forecast utilization.

A private warning is determined for each hazard that can cause risk for a private.

Privates in the US who have a risk from storm surges can make use of the storm surge

inundation forecasts issued by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) (Blake, E. S. et al.

2013). In Japan, every private, without exception, has a risk from earthquakes. He can

make use of the Earthquake Early Warnings (JMA 2009) as private warnings. Many

Japanese privates located on sloping lands have risks from hazards including debris flows.

Sediment Early Warnings are available to them as private warnings (Japan Fire

Department 2006; Takahashi 2008). Water level observations are available to those who

have risks from river flooding.

Private warnings may be different for different privates depending on risk tolerance,

i.e., their attitudes toward risk. If multiple forecasts for a hazard are available, a risk-

averse private can choose a forecast with a longer lead time as the private warning.

Regarding hazards associated with rainfall, most privates in Japan can use a heavy rain

warning to become aware of imminent risk, while risk-averse privates can instead use

heavy rain advisories. In contrast, privates who want to decide at the last minute can use

sediment early warnings or the latest observations of record-breaking rain. Privates can

take a tiered response. For example, at the first step, privates shift their mode from normal

to alert, then at the second step, they evacuate. For this case, two private warnings are

needed for one hazard.

When a private receives a private warning, he will shift his mode of life or business

from normal to emergency. Modal shifts from normal to emergency are impossible using

an extension of normal thinking. Most people are reluctant to shift without hesitation.

Others may overlook important information. This is because, for most people, disaster-

related issues are peripheral or incidental to their priorities (Tierney et al. 2001).

To avoid overlooking vital information, privates should passively shift their response

actions according to external triggers. Therefore, it is desirable to receive private

warnings with an alarm. There should be no room for deliberative thinking or hesitation

to take action. There is no additional accurate information that is worth waiting for, nor

are there other situations to consider. These other situations have been examined by

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deliberation in normal times.

When a private who has risk from storm surges receives a private warning, he must

evacuate at once to a place with no exposure to flooding. JMA (2018) shows samples of

response actions when a person receives an Earthquake Early Warning.

Private warnings are not always the most appropriate information for knowing how

imminent a hazard is. Many of these may miss hazard occurrences despite the existence

of too many false alarms. These are common for forecasts of extremes. Currently,

quantities of skillful information would not been used and there have been too many

losses that could have been avoided if the information had been used (Meyer et al. 2014).

This is the rationale for private warnings. The improvement in safety by these warnings

will not only be significant but also be dramatically significant.

Private warnings should be updated as observations and forecasts improve. They

should also be updated in relation to risk diagnoses. For example, a study estimated that

the annual probability of rainfall which Texas experienced during Hurricane Harvey in

2017 as a six-fold increase since the late 20th century (Emanuel 2017). This means that

exposure may change in accordance with climate change. The assessment of vulnerability

should be updated according to the change of preparedness. Therefore, the diagnosis of

private risks should be updated.

Updating risk diagnoses will lead to risk reductions.

c. Risk communication

The function of risk-care is, regarding information flow, changing it from diverging

from a forecast center to the general public to converging on a private. The information

flow converging on a private is the private warning.

Figure 1 illustrates the risk communication by private warnings. This communication

consists of two timelines: the timeline in normal times and that in an emergency. The

former is shown as broken lines and the latter as solid lines. One communication in

normal times is made between a private and a risk-care provider, consisting of risk

diagnosis and shared decision-making. Communication in an emergency is a one-

directional delivery of a private warning from an information distributor to a private.

Another type of communication in normal times is the contract between a private and

an information distributor to distribute private warnings in emergencies. This distribution

contract is based on the prescription of private warnings issued by a risk-care provider.

The distributor establishes delivery settings according to the contract with the private.

Delivery settings consist of the settings for detecting private warnings from available

information and the settings for sending them to the private. Detecting and sending must

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be automatic processes. Privates must prepare their own receiving apparatus.

Table 2 shows the differences among weather information, current warnings and

private warnings with respect to communication. Weather information has several forms

of content, including texts, numerical values and graphics. While warnings may have a

content form, they primarily have the form of a signal; that is, it is essentially a signal that

shows whether a warning is active or not. Private warnings share only the latter aspect of

warnings, i.e., they have only the form of a signal. The difference in updating is analogous

to that in information form. While the update of weather information is periodic and that

of warnings is event-based, updating of private warnings is risk-based. Risk-based

updating is not always the same as event-based, because of the difference between the

target event of warning and a private’s risk.

Weather information is disseminated to the general public and every member of the

general public can freely access it. This is also the case for warnings, except for the

emergency authorities, who can receive them without active access. Private warnings are

delivered only to contracted privates without active access. Receiving information

without active access is referred to as passive access. With respect to the communication

function, private warnings are the opposite of weather information and share nothing with

the latter. Warnings are between these.

For smart decisions, modal shifts from normal to emergency are triggered by private

warnings. In contrast, for traditional decision-making, these shifts are triggered by

information analysis. For the former case, the best timing for a modal shift is the time

when one receives a private warning. For the latter case, the analysis of information only

tells whether it is the time at emergency or not but not the best timing. If it is an emergency,

the best time has already passed. If not, it has not occurred yet.

Analyzing information must start from choosing information useful for knowing the

imminent risk. However, as emergency information for disasters becomes more abundant,

it becomes very confusing for non-experts to know which information they can use (Bates

et al. 2016). For example, there is multitude of information only for hurricanes. Every

member of the general public can freely access weather information including warnings.

This can be called public access and has become possible by advances in digital

technology (AMS 2007). This is the communication type which is available to users in

traditional decision-making and is referred to as public access-type communication.

The communications compatible with smart decision-making have a direct connection

with a private’s response process and private-specific delivery. This type of

communication is referred to as risk communication. This is a paradigm shift in

communication. Risk communication is by no means simply delivering risk information

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via normal communication systems.

Table 3 shows the characteristics of risk communications compared to public access

type communications. Users can freely access information and choose and interpret in the

case of public access-type communication. Privates have no freedom in the case of risk

communication. The information to be distributed is determined in advance by a

prescription based on risk diagnoses. This information is determined by the prescription

together with response actions followed by a private warning. This type of

communication works in accordance with a protocol shared between a risk-care provider

and a private. Although private warnings are simply a signal, their meanings are

determined without any room for interpretation. The following response is also

determined without any room for deliberation or hesitation. Risk communication is a

communication based on a protocol.

It is often said that no two disasters are ever the same. Even if this is true, as long as

similar failures have been repeated, there is something that we can do by the application

of smart decisions. These applications cannot completely eliminate risks, but they can

reduce them. Too often they can.

4. A medical center

Previously, this paper has illustrated both smart decision problems and risk

communications by private warnings. This section will examine the case of a medical

center to expand on these concepts.

Bellevue Hospital Center (BHC) is one of the leading public hospitals in New York

City with a facility of 25 stories and 800 inpatient beds (e.g., Hartocollis and Bernstein

2012; Ramme et al. 2015). BHC was inundated by a storm surge from Hurricane Sandy

in October 2012, resulting in power failures, including the backup power and eventually

a halt in functionality (Ofri 2012). In the midst of the storm, BHC started patient

evacuations from the hospital. With all elevators inoperable, it took more than two days

to complete the evacuations. Fortunately, the evacuations were performed without any

deaths (Ofri 2012; Redlener and Reilly 2012).

If there had been a risk-care function at that time, BHC could have received a risk

diagnosis.

BHC is located on Manhattan Island facing the East River. Located in this low-lying

area, BHC would have been diagnosed as having exposure to cyclone-induced

inundations. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, many facilities in low-

lying areas were inundated and isolated without power. For example, at least 34 patients

died at Memorial Medical Center during and after the storm (Okie 2008; Deichmann

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2008). The observed inundation from Sandy was 4-9 ft (1.22 – 2.74 m) in Manhattan

(Blake, et al. 2013; Sullivan and Uccellini 2013).

After having identified that BHC had exposure to inundations from a storm surges,

risk-care would have evaluated BHC’s vulnerability to these threats. The accreditation

standards updated after Katrina were designed to enable facilities to function alone for 96

hours, emphasizing backup power generation resistant to flooding (Powell 2012). BHC

had also followed these standards. “Yet these recommendations proved insufficient”

(Powell 2012).

Sandy made landfall in New Jersey at 1930 EDT on 29 October 2012 (2330 UTC 29

October) (Blake et al. 2013). It seems shortly after at 2100 EDT, BHC lost external power

(Hartocollis and Bernstein 2012). By approximately 0000 EDT on 30 October, BHC lost

all power including emergency power. Although the emergency generator was on the 13

th floor, the basement fuel pumps were submerged and could not pump fuel to the

generator (Ofri 2012; Redlener and Reilly 2012). As long as there was the possibility of

fuel pump failure, BHC might lose all power. This leads to the conclusion that BHC had

a high vulnerability to inundation from a storm surges.

Hence, the risk diagnosis would be that BHC had a risk of inundation from storm surges.

If the fuel pumps had been placed on a higher floor, BHC might have reduced their

vulnerability. However, this step required reconstruction and was impossible because of

building codes (Hartocollis and Bernstein 2012; Powell 2012).

Hoss and Fischbeck (2016) interviewed emergency managers who had experienced

FEMA’s training and reported that emergency management was not the main profession

of most of these managers (Hoss and Fischbeck 2016). This was the case for the staff at

BHC. If there had been a function of risk-care in society, BHC could have prepared

private warnings and response actions with the support of risk care.

The private warning in this case would have been the information by which BHC could

know the imminence of the inundation. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) storm

surge inundation forecast (Blake et al. 2013) was available to BHC. The response action

followed by the private warning would have instantly shifted the operational mode from

normal to emergency to evacuate all patients. BHC should have examined the

implementation plan and conducted exercises.

BHC should have made a contract with an information provider to distribute the NHC

storm surge inundation forecasts as private warnings. BHC, in its emergency center,

should have prepared their receiving equipment and display panel that could provide an

alarm when it received a private warning. Confirmation of this practice should have been

made through repetitions of connectivity tests.

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If private warnings had been prepared in such a way, the alarm at the BHC emergency

center would have sounded on Saturday 27 October at 1100EDT. The initial NHC storm

surge inundation forecast of 4 to 8 ft (1.2 – 2.4 m) above ground level for the coastline

including New York was issued at that time (Blake et al. 2013). Upont receiving this

forecast, among a number of other information inputs, the distributor having a contract

with BHC could have sent it as a private warning to BHC.

Recognizing the alarm, the emergency personnel of BHC could have initiated a

response action to shift to emergency mode. Other staff could have moved into emergency

mode and started patient evacuations according to the response plan. This process would

have been proceeded automatically. The staff would have been engaged in normal

operations at that moment.

“Storm-surge forecasts were quantitatively very good,” Rappaport (2014) wrote. So,

forecast accuracy “does not appear to have been a key contributor to the storm-surge

losses” (Rappaport 2014). It was shortly after 2200 EDT 29 October (Ofri 2012) that BHC

lost all electric power. Therefore, the private warning could have provided BHC with 58

hours of lead time. Although Sullivan and Uccellini (2013) recommended a lead time at

least 48 hours before the onset of a tropical storm or gale force winds, it was said to be

sufficient.

New York City officials decided not to require evacuations of public medical centers

including BHC, because “they believed it was safer to leave the patients in the hospitals

than to move them without clear evidence that evacuation was necessary” (NYT 2012).

Verifications of disaster response usually examine whether such decisions by city officials

were appropriate or not.

City officials were more concerned about wind damages than damage from the storm

surge (NYT 2012). When Sandy made landfall, it was an extratropical low and had an

intensity of category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS) (Blake et

al. 2013). Although most members of the public were more concerned about damage from

winds (Morrow 2015), the hazard from which BHC had risk was not wind but inundation

from the storm surge. Storm-surge information is difficult to communicate (Rappaport

2014). This was also the case for the Kansai Airports Company mentioned above. Unless

the risk diagnosis states that one has risk from a storm surge, few pay attention to this

information. Therefore, the problem was not the decision by city officials but was rather

the lack of privately-focused risk diagnoses.

Among privates having exposure to inundation from a storm surge, the risks are

different depending on their vulnerabilities. All five medical centers in Manhattan lost

power. Three of these were inundated. One of the remaining two evacuated its patients

16

before it lost external power, and the other was able to continue operations using backup

power. Two of the medical centers that were inundated, but not BHC evacuated patients

before the storm hit (Jangi 2012; Powell 2012).

These five medical centers in Manhattan were affected differently by the inundation

caused by Sandy. This is the reason why risk diagnoses for individual privates are

essential. Each of the three medical centers that were inundated should have known that

“clear evidence that evacuation was necessary.” The decision by city officials was made

from a public view, for which the risk for an individual medical center or for individual

medical care was in the blind spot.

BHC should have been aware of its accountability for knowing its own risks and the

hazards that may cause risk for it. Of course, this was beyond its ability because it is a

medical service. Therefore, society should have provided the function of providing risk-

care, which could have enabled BHC to know its private risks and to prepare responses

to them.

5. Summary and discussion

A private approach to safety requires that individual forecast users respond to risks

using forecasts. At the same time, this approach provides them with a system of user-

focused support. Therefore, contrary to the accuracy myth, it is able to bridge between

forecast progress and societal safety. This is a paradigm shift from the centralized

measures for safety. The new concepts introduced in this paper to characterize personal

approach are privates and risk-care. Privates are the users who become aware of the

accountability for one’s own safety. The function that provides privates with professional

support is referred to as risk-care.

One of another two paradigm shifts is changing decision-making from the traditional

type to the smart type. The other is the paradigm shift in communication structure from

the public access type to risk communication. Most privates know little about which

hazards may affect them. Therefore, the vital function of risk-care is diagnosing a private

to identify the hazards that may cause risk for him. The main part of smart decisions is

the shared decision-making between a private and a risk-care provider in normal times. It

determines the private warnings and response actions to be followed. Upon receiving

private warnings, privates automatically start response actions which are determined in

advance as default options. The risk communication by private warnings is private-

specific communication that is linked to the private’s response. The information flow of

this communication converges to a private.

Services are required to meet the needs of the social function of risk-care. There is no

17

prototype for this service, either in the public sector or in the private sector. This will

emerge in our society as a commercial service under the name of a risk-care service. This

is a different business from WCE.

When a society lacks the function to meet a need, management mediating or integrating

disciplines into one that is able to meet the needs is often called “boundary management”

(i.e., Cash et al. 2003; Feldman and Ingram 2009). Although risk-care resembles

boundary management, it is not a one-off project but a built-in service of a society, such

as primary care in medical service, which is accessible for everyone whenever necessary.

This function is a network that allow close and ongoing communication among multiple

sectors (Sarewitz and Pielke 2007), and which will be embodied in a new industry called

risk-care service. In general, implementation of technology does not necessarily proceed

from invention (Taleb 2012). It is often an emerging industry that will provide a bridge

between technology and implementation. In other words, societal benefit will be realized

by transforming products to commodities. Forecast products have never met an industry

that bridges meteorology and society.

Risk-care services will not produce forecasts, nor will they disseminate forecasts.

Hence, they will not overlap with WCE or be competitive with WCE. Weather

information that is freely accessible and without fees will never become a commodity

with a fee. It is not the forecast itself but the service that will become a commodity.

However, forecasts themselves may become commodities. This paper presumes that the

sources of private warnings consist of existing information and are mainly issued by

public authorities. In the course of endogenous development, information distributors

would add new information. Forecasts tailored to this need can be commodities.

This is noteworthy as an opportunity for a probabilistic form of information that has

long been little used. There are two reasons that this type of information will become

important. First, while it is necessary to evaluate forecast uncertainties, forecasts of

probabilistic form can inform the uncertainties (e.g., Morss et al. 2005; NRC 2006).

Second, private warnings should be diversified depending on privates’ attitudes toward

risk. Probabilistic forms of forecasts will meet these needs.

Risk-care services will make use of a number of excellent forecasts that have not been

widely used. Providing forecasts as market goods will be a newly added business for

WCE, providing an opportunity to the WCE. The conductor who can coordinates WCE

(Hooke and Pielke 2000) is, as a matter of fact, the market.

“As these changes develop, weather information quality/standards, ownership, and

access principles need updating” (Thorpe and Rogers 2018). Forecasts are important

inputs for risk-care services. Both labeling of the forms and the qualities and

18

standardization of the labeling are necessary for the service to maintain the quality of

the service. Without these, risk-care services cannot identify the source information of

private warnings.

The labeling of the forms and qualities and the standardization of labeling are referred

to as quality standards. They are necessary not only for risk-care service but also for every

forecast user. Surprisingly, these are lacking in current dissemination systems for

forecasts. For drugs, there are regulations for labeling and approval. In the U.S., the

Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (1938) regulates drug approval and labeling under

the administration of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 2019). The WCE must

implement quality standards to make further developments.

19

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24

CAPTIONS

TABLE 1. Components of the decision problem for traditional decision and smart

decisions.

TABLE 2. Characteristics of communications for weather information, warnings and

private warnings.

TABLE 3. Characteristics of risk communications in comparison to public-access

communications.

25