A strategy for communication between key agencies and members of the public during crisis situations

Three case studies were explored in order to develop a communication strategy that could be employed by key agencies in conjunction with members of the public during incidents that had the potential to generate cascading effects:

1) The floods in South-West England (December 2013 – February 2014);
2) The thunderstorm that hit the Pukkelpop music festival in Belgium (18 August 2011); and
3) The rioting in the town of Haren, in the Netherlands (21 September 2012), after thousands of young people gathered for a local girl’s birthday party advertised as ‘Project X Haren’.

The strategy was based on information gathered through a review of the literature on the role of the media in emergency management, an exploration of the communication strategies deployed by key agencies in each of these case studies, and the key findings from a critical thematic analysis of 41 semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders between December 2014 and May 2015.

Link to the report.