Study suggests improvements for disaster alerts in Brazil

Only 1.83% of the disaster alerts triggered by SMS in the country between 2018 and 2023 contained all the elements considered essential for effective communication, according to the study Disaster Alert Messages: Challenges and Opportunities Based on the Brazilian Experience. Conducted by researchers Murilo Noli da Fonseca and Luciene Pimentel da Silva, from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR), the study analyzed 73,701 messages sent by the country's civil protection and defense agencies, focusing on the efficiency of the information distributed. The result pointed to the absence of several elements necessary for efficient communication in the messages. "Upon receiving a message, a person needs to be able to identify whether they are at risk, understand what is happening, know where the event may occur, what they should do, and for how long they need to remain on alert," explains Luciene. The study analyzed SMS messages of up to 160 characters registered in the system of the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) between 2018 and 2023. The researchers classified all the messages by source, hazard, location, guidance, and time, and analyzed these elements according to the standards of the Disaster Classification and Coding system (Cobrade). An example of what is expected by the standard is the explanation of the potential damages of the hazard, which appeared in only 7.7% of the messages analyzed. The precise location was also identified in only 5.9% of the messages, and the times of the end of the hazard appeared in only 9% of the texts. The very identification of the message category — whether it was a notice, a communication, an alert, or a warning — did not appear in 76.2% of the messages distributed. The word "alert" was present in only 19% of the messages, while the word "notice" appeared in 2.2% and "attention" in 1.8% of the texts sent. In the researchers' assessment, the absence of these elements reveals inefficiency in disaster communication. "The clearer and more specific the message, the greater the conditions for it to be understood and used in decision-making," adds the PUCPR researcher. Limitations The standard limit of 160 characters, including spaces and punctuation, set by the SMS sending tool was also pointed out by the researchers as one of the challenges for including more complete and specific information in the alerts. Diversification with the complementary use of different communication channels such as Cell Broadcast, messaging apps, and local communication systems, as has recently been adopted in Brazil, results in a strategy capable of increasing communication efficiency, the study highlights. For researcher Murilo Fonseca, there is not necessarily a single channel capable of addressing all situations. "A multichannel system needs to consider the characteristics of the population, including different levels of literacy and access to information, the presence of elderly people, people with disabilities, and other groups that may face communication barriers; the characteristics of the territory; the available and accessible means of communication; and the dynamics of the phenomenon," he states. Data Overall, the majority of the messages analyzed, 73.6%, were intended to warn about heavy rains. The second most frequent type of communication was about low air humidity, representing 8.5% of the messages, followed by hail alert messages, which represented 4.2% of the messages analyzed. The seasons of spring and summer, which occur between the months of September and March in the Southern Hemisphere, were the periods of the year that concentrated 75% of message dispatches each year. These messages were distributed mainly in January, 15.9%, and December, 13.4%. In terms of regionality, southeastern Brazil had the highest number of message dispatches to the population, with 75.2% of the texts sent. The Southern Region accounted for 18.6%, the Central-West 3.7%, the Northeast 1.5%, and the North 0.98% of the messages.