Severe Weather Warnings: An Interdisciplinary Approach

This book offers a comprehensive description and analysis of natural hazard warnings, drawing on perspectives from the social sciences, physical sciences, and interdisciplinary fields such as disaster studies to articulate a distinction between traditional warnings and what might be called interdisciplinary warnings. Traditional warnings approach warning technology, design, and application from a principally scientific and technical perspective. Human factors, while considered, often are of secondary concern. Interdisciplinary warnings, on the other hand, maintain a critical emphasis on the technical merits of warning systems, but also ask, “Will psychological and community factors such as culture and structure shape how the system is used, and, if so, can this information be incorporated into system design preemptively to make it more effective?” Given the absence of systematic work on interdisciplinary warnings, a book-length monograph discussing and synthesizing knowledge from the various fields focused on warnings and warning response is of critical importance to both academics and practitioners. Broadly conceived, the book presents readers with an in-depth overview of warnings, interdisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary collaboration.