Assessing floodwater and communicating risk

With a La Niña officially declared and predicted to last through the first quarter of 2021, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC has released a series of flood risk warning research findings.

As the Flood risk communication project comes to completion, so too does the Research into practice brief series—a set of concise summaries of the project’s research findings for end-users and practitioners—with the seventh and final brief now available: Developing and validating a tool to assess expertise in the assessment of floodwater.

Practice brief seven outlines a proof of concept approach for the development and testing of an online tool, the Expert Intensive Skills Evaluation (EXPERTise 2.0), designed to assess people’s ability to use cues in the environment for assessing the risk of floodwater over the road.

Risk is often difficult to assess and a poor ability to perceive risk is likely to result in increased engagement in risky driving behaviours. To better understand the decision-making processes involving drivers’ decisions to enter floodwaters, the research team explored the ability to recognise floodwater hazard and adequately assess the level of associated risk using EXPERTise 2.0 (Expert Intensive Skills Evaluation). 

“Past behaviour often predicts future behaviours, so we need to modify risk communication and influence risk perception,” said project leader A/Prof Mel Taylor of Macquarie University.

“People have got to know that it’s a risk to start with if we want them to engage with the messaging and then we need to provide them with ways to manage the risk; this is a fundamental aspect.”

EXPERTise 2.0 assesses the user’s ability to interact with task-related cues and make decisions. In this pilot study, the task assessed was to not enter floodwater. The research team therefore aims to measure cue utilisation in the context of driving into floodwater.

 “It doesn’t tell us what specific cues people are using but it gives us information about the extent to which they are using cues,” A/Prof Taylor explained. 

“We can see whether people using cues are more risk aware and while we are still refining the tool, we have already found that people who use cues have higher expertise in judging risk and are therefore more likely to make safer decisions.”

The last brief in the series summarises the findings of this pilot study findings, providing evidence that this newly developed assessment of cue utilisation may be a valid tool for classifying an individual’s capacity for cue-base processing when encountering floodwater on the road.

Download the full Research into practice brief series here.

As companion outputs to the practice briefs, the CRC has developed three short videos summarising the research findings of three of the seven briefs:

• When is water on the roads dangerous? – Perspectives of emergency service professionals summarises Research into practice brief three, providing an overview of interviews conducted with emergency services professionals who communicate about flood risk.

• Driving and recreating in floodwater – What does Australia think? summarises Research into practice brief four, providing an overview of findings from a nationally-representative survey of the Australian public that investigated driving and recreating in floodwater.

• Evaluating flood risk communication messaging – Analysing flood risk communication campaigns summarises Research into practice brief five, providing an overview of two research activities: an online scan of recent flood risk communication campaigns, and analysis of questions relating to flood risk messaging and the perceived effectiveness of communications, from a nationally-representative survey of the Australian public.

View the full Flood risk communication playlist here.

In conjunction with AFAC, State Emergency Services research end-users and the ABC, the results of this research are now informing the co-development of a set of public communication guidelines and the establishment of a set of national community safety announcements for use by the ABC in emergency broadcasting. 

Read more about the research here.