In sudden onset emergencies such as fires and marauding firearm attacks, there can be limited time in which to convey messages to the public. Establishing the most effective communication methods to encourage safe behaviour is of vital importance. The World Health Organisation, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and the UK government have identified that a core requirement to be developed during emergency response is effective communication to the public about what actions they should take in emergencies.

This project seeks to address the challenge of understanding how and why members of the public react to first responders communication strategies in emergencies. We bring together expertise from social psychological research on group processes, first responder experience and guidance creation, and computational modelling to test and simulate collective behaviour.

At the core of our collaborative project are two research questions: 1) How can group-based language be used to increase citizens adherence to first responder guidance? 2) How can we formalise the impact of group-based language into evacuation models?

We address our research questions across 3 work packages. In Work Package 1, we use experimental paradigms from social psychology to explore how to facilitate a sense of teamwork between first responders and the public in an emergency, and determine which communication strategy from first responders can best facilitate effective coordination with the public. Here we combine theory on group processes with previous research on emergency decontaminations to make novel insights into which communication strategies most effective from the perspective of the public.

In Work Package 2, we harness the ability of computational models to act as both hypotheses testing tools and help to plan for emergency response. We will create a novel evidence-based model element that can simulate intergroup relations between first responders and citizens according to the communication strategy used. Our conceptualisation will be open-source to encourage uptake into models used to plan for emergency response.

Our focus throughout the project is to ensure that our work is useful for first responders and that our findings can be easily integrated into operational practice. Work Package 3 is dedicated to engaging in co-production with first responders throughout the project to seek their expertise. We will conduct interviews with first responders to establish their views on existing guidance when communicating with the public, and will work together with them to ensure our research activities in Work Packages 1 and 2 are ecologically valid and that our outputs stay at the forefront of developments in practice and policy.