In the episode of The Engagement Ring, we feature a conversation with UAlbany's Dr. Jeannette Sutton of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity and Dr. Nick Bassill, director of the State Weather Risk Communication Center, both of whom who have made significant advances in closing the gaps in emergency preparedness and response. Dr Sutton specializes in disaster and risk with a primary focus on online informal communication and public alerts and warnings disseminated via terse messaging channels. Much of her research investigates the evolving role of information and communication technology, including social media and mobile devices for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Dr Bassill's center provides rapid, tailored, real time weather information to help state agencies, emergency managers and other critical stakeholders prepare for and respond to severe weather events.
Jeannette Sutton, PhD. Disaster & Risk Communication
State Weather Risk Communication Center (SWRCC)
Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC)
Center for Technology in Government (CTG)
Article from the UAlbany News Center:: UAlbany Researchers Develop FEMA Dashboard to Support Emergency Alert Messaging, July 15, 2025
Article from the UAlbany News Center: UAlbany's State Wether Risk Communication Center Featured in 'Cloud Warriors' Book, June 17, 2025
From Gov. Kathy Hochul's website: Governor Hochul Updates New Yorkers on State's Preparedness in the Face of Extreme Weather, June 11, 2025
Article from the UAlbany News Center: UAlbany Researchers Support Launch of New York Heat Risk and Illness Dashboard, June 5, 2025
Article from the UAlbany News Center: State Weather Risk Communication Cener's Nick Bassill Featured on Department of Transportation Podcast, Feb 29, 2024
The Engagement Ring, Episode 31: Closing the Gaps in Emergency Preparedness and Response
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER /MARY HUNT:
Welcome to The Engagement Ring. Your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars and community partners working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
They've said that it's a revolutionary technology, and it makes me really proud that we've put it out there and we've trained a lot of people, but we have a long way to go.
NICK BASSILL:
To me it became clear that New York needed some sort of central organizing hub to do this work for the state rather than do it individually with each agency or authority separately.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
I'll talk with two experts from the University at Albany whose innovative efforts to close gaps in strategic emergency planning and response are keeping us safer and better informed during extreme weather events and other disasters.
NICK BASSILL:
Jeanette and I make a good team because we each have skills that maybe the other one doesn't have and so much of research is, or I would argue, maybe should be interdisciplinary.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here's my conversation with Dr Jeanette Sutton of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, and Dr Nick Bassill, director of the Statewide Weather Risk Communication Center at the University at Albany.
MARY HUNT:
Welcome to the podcast, Jeanette and Nick. It's so nice to have you together. I rarely get to see you together so it's really a treat for me, so thanks for coming.
NICK BASSILL:
Thanks for having us.
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Thanks.
MARY HUNT:
You know, when I talk to people about public engagement at UAlbany, I always try to stress how seriously we take our obligation as a public research university to conduct research and work that positively impacts the public and that addresses critical needs of our communities, whether those communities are local, throughout New York State, they're national or even, you know, worldwide. And the best way I know how to do that is I provide examples of the public engaged work that we're doing. Nick, you're a meteorologist and the director of the State Weather Risk Communication Center at UAlbany, or SWRCC, as we've come to know it. You help state and local emergency managers better prepare for and respond to extreme weather. And Jeanette through your work in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, and even before you came to UAlbany, you've been focused on developing resources and training to help emergency managers create and disseminate more effective emergency alerts and warnings for the public. So, you're both in the business of managing risk and responding to disasters. The first thing I want to ask you is where did this calling come from for each of you. Why did you feel drawn to this field?
NICK BASSILL:
Well, for me personally while I work in the physical sciences, when you think of physical sciences you might think of lots of math and computer programming and that sort of thing, but I've always felt a little more at home in the applied aspect of that. So how do you maybe take what you learned, or how do you create some sort of tool that someone can use. That's always been more fun for me. So, I enjoy doing those things and interacting with the people and seeing how they can actually learn something from what maybe I'm telling them or respond a different way. So, I feel more at home talking to people making things than I do deriving a formula or coding up some nifty computer script.
MARY HUNT:
Jeannette…
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
That's a really good question, and it's a long and winding story, but I'll keep it short.
MARY HUNT:
You don’t need to.
[Laughter from all]
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Well, my before I went back for my PhD, I was working as a victim advocate in response to the Columbine High School shooting. And while I was there, working within the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and working alongside of other victim advocates and sheriff responders, I realized that it would be a better use of my skills and talent to help them to be better responders than for me to be a responder. And so, when I went back to school, I went to the University of Colorado at Boulder. I met Dr Dennis Mileti, who was the director of the Natural Hazards Center at the time and also the chair of the Sociology Department. And he was known within the world of disasters as the leader in alerts and warnings and he became my dissertation chair and my mentor. And so, I followed an academic path that began with being a practitioner.
MARY HUNT:
Was there a particular event for you, Nick that piqued your interest, or always had an interest in the area of weather and meteorology?
NICK BASSILL:
Well, if you ask people who are into meteorology, how did you get into meteorology a lot of people say there was a hurricane or a snowstorm, or, you know, a tornado went through my town or something like that. I don't have a specific memory. I guess one of the earliest memories I have is watching coverage of Hurricane Andrew on TV. That was 1992. I don't know. I don't think I was already really into it because I don't think I would have been watching the Weather Channel from Wisconsin about a hurricane in Florida had I not already been into meteorology. But that was how I got into the field in the first place, but how got to where I am now specifically is after I came UAlbany a little over a decade ago, I started working with the New York State Mesonet, and that is a network of weather observations that's very public- focused. And so that is probably how I really got kicked down this line of work.
MARY HUNT:
I imagine growing up in Wisconsin, you probably saw your share of extreme weather.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, Wisconsin, it's a slightly more extreme version of New York. And now our summers are a little warmer there, and our winters are a little colder there, but they don't get hurricanes like we get sometimes.
MARY HUNT:
Well, I know you said, and we'll talk about this, that New York State really gets it all, which is unusual. I never realized that until you were on The Engagement Ring a while back, and we chatted about that, and you said, you name the weather and at some point, New York State will probably experience it. Can you share a quick update on the work of SWRCC? When you first were on The Engagement Ring, it was 2023 and the center had just launched, perhaps, if you can briefly share what was the impetus for the launch of the center, and where have you come over the last couple of years.
NICK BASSILL:
So the impetus was basically the fact that most weather dependent organizations do not have a meteorologist on staff, and so if you are attempting to interpret some complex forecast, or you want to make some tool of your own, or you have a report to write, or you're requesting a disaster declaration, or something like that, that requires some sort of reasonably significant expert level of meteorology, and you don't have one of them, you're going to need to turn somewhere else or just not do that work that you probably deem important. So, as we were working with the New York State Mesonet data and trying to get that into the hands of emergency managers and other users across the state, we ran up against that challenge, and so we started working with them, hand-in-hand, to better utilize that data. And that slowly evolved to other types of weather forecasts and products and things like that. And it became clear that New York, to me, it became clear that New York needed some sort of central organizing hub to do this work for the state, rather than do it individually with each agency or authority separately. So that was really the impetus for how we got here, and thankfully, we had a champion for our work in the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, commissioner, Commissioner Bray. And where we are now is we launched a little less than two years ago, and we just about a month ago now, it might be his one-month anniversary, hired our tenth and final employee. So, over that time, we've grown from zero to 10, and that includes a number of interns. Coming up on this fall we'll have, I think, our thirtieth intern working with us. So, it's been a big and slowly evolving, steadily evolving group.
MARY HUNT:
And the governor, Governor Hochul is a big champion for your program as well. She was just here recently for a news conference where I know she talked about the work of SWRCC, and you spoke.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, so in the wake of the Texas floods, obviously, every state, well, I shouldn't say obviously, but I assume every state, and in addition to New York, sort of did a self-assessment of, hey, could this happen here. If it did, what would we do? How would this affect us? And New York was no different there. And the governor obviously had created this center just two years prior. So, I think she wanted to sort of say, hey, I, you know, thanks to my leadership, this is here now, and wanted to take credit for that, and we are obviously very grateful to her for that. And so, the press conference and that visit was all about that flooding event in Texas and how that could maybe be avoided here. Not that we can avoid the rainfall per se, but we could avoid the impacts in some way. And what lessons can we learn from that to apply, either here at our center or on the state side to mitigate a similar disaster in the future?
MARY HUNT:
And Jeanette, your research into the role of information and communication technology for disaster preparedness, response and recovery includes social media and mobile devices, and it's led to something called the Message Design Dashboard. What is the dashboard?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
So, the Message Design Dashboard was research funded by FEMA, the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Program, which is IPAWS, and they reached out to me to ask if we could design a software system that could be utilized by emergency managers to write better alerts and warnings that are issued over the wireless emergency alert system, which is managed by IPAWS. When IPAWS looked across the nation at how emergency managers were utilizing their system, the WEA system, what they noticed was a real inconsistency in the ways that messages were written. They were frequently incomplete and really lacking the kinds of details that would help people to make good decisions about how to protect themselves. And emergency managers said we need help. So, the IPAWS leadership had seen a prototype that I had shared at a meeting of the big city emergency managers, and fortunately there was somebody there at the right time and the right place. They saw what I was proposing could be built, and they said, will you. So, the MDD is basically when an emergency manager sits down at their computer. It provides a workflow from the beginning to the end where when you've completed writing the message it is a message that contains all of the necessary contents for a person to make a good decision about how to protect themselves, and so it eliminates the guesswork from an emergency manager, and it also provides all of the contents that they would need to build a good message with the exception of the location of impact and the time that they're sending the message. But it's by some people within the international emergency management organizations, it's actually, it's the International Association of Emergency Managers. They've said that it's a revolutionary technology, and it makes me really proud that we've put it out there, and we've trained a lot of people, but we have a long way to go.
MARY HUNT:
How widespread is its use at this point? Can you say? Is it deployed in all 50 states?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Well, it's freely accessible to all emergency managers. I don't have the statistics on how many people are actively using it. At the time that we were under contract with FEMA, we spent a year doing trainings, and we trained about 500 people, which could represent maybe 500 organizations, but there might have been multiple people from each organization who were in on those trainings. We know that it's been used in different incidents across the country, and there's still some gaps,
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, well, everything is a process and an evolution, and we're always learning. That's the thing. And we'll talk a little bit about the test the Texas flooding, and what your thoughts and reflections on that were, but always much to be learned from an emergency or a crisis in going forward. There's something called the Warn Room, and the Lexicon related to MDD, I believe. Tell us what that is, Jeannette… those are, I should say.
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
The Warning Lexicon is basically, it's the backbone, the data of the Message Design Dashboard. It’s a publication that we paid to have open access through the Natural Hazards Review, which is the journal. It's an engineering journal, and the Warning Lexicon contains all of the contents that are included in the MDD. So, if somebody does not have access to the MDD but they have a paper or a digital copy of the Warning Lexicon, they can build messages without having to access the software. We know that it's been downloaded about 15,000 times within the U.S. and internationally. I have international partners who have asked can they translate it into other languages, and I've said, yes, go for it. That would be wonderful. And so, the warning lexicon represents 48 different hazards, and since that was published a few years ago, we've added to it, and so we have new publications coming out. One is on missing and endangered persons, because the wireless emergency alert service is also used for Amber Alerts and other missing persons alerts, and those are commonly poorly constructed messages as well. And then we've also done research on how to communicate that an event is over, what you would normally call “all clear,” but we call them post alert messages, and it's essentially indicating that the hazard is over and that it is safe to resume what you were doing before. And so, we're adding to the lexicon, because there's always new hazards to be paying attention to, and there's absolutely the need for more research to do this better across hazards that we weren't previously focused on. Like, I'm really curious right now about how to construct better messages for law enforcement accidents and incidents, especially those things that occur on campuses where you have to quickly communicate about an active shooter or an attacker or other kind of an assailant. How do you do that in a way that is really effective, without confusing people? And when we… this is me going off on a tangent now, but you know, when we think about the kids who are currently in elementary and high school coming into college, they have already learned a set of language around those kinds of events, and so how do universities take what students have already been learning and integrate that into their plans, but also communicate it effectively to people who are my age and Nick's age, who we didn't have to do shelter in place or lockdown activities when we were kids. So, we have to learn from what's currently happening and then apply that to today's messaging environment. And there's not research on that yet.
MARY HUNT:
And what is the Warn Room?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
So, the Warn Room is my own private side gig.
[Laughter]
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
When I started working on the Message Design Dashboard, I started paying attention to the WEAS that were being issued across the country, and I realized that, well, research moves pretty slowly, but we already knew how to apply a lot of research to what was out there. So, I started blogging, and I created the Warn Room and started blogging about the messages that were being issued, and I applied all of our theory and evidence to those messages to show if you rewrote it this way, it would follow what we know works. And so, I had a lot of emergency managers who started reading it and still read it and share it widely with one another today, and there's a lot of trainers also who are now using that as part of their training materials when they go out and train PIOs. So, I think that it's having this real practical reach to help people to apply these lessons in really simple and easy format. And then I also turned it into an LLC, so now I do consulting.
MARY HUNT:
Hmm, very interesting. I think for both of you, you know, you'd probably agree it's not enough to have these warning systems or the ability to predict the disasters, but you have to be able to communicate this information and train the emergency managers who are going to use the information. Nick, whether it's weather forecasting that you do, or Jeanette, whether it's the way to construct an effective emergency alert, how are you working with the emergency managers, whether they're state agencies or municipalities, local agencies, cities, you know, cities, to make sure that they're using the tools that you're creating or the information you're creating effectively? What kind of training or kind of interactions do you have? Maybe name some of the partners that you're working with.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah. So, on our side at the state weather communication center, that happens in a couple ways, and those are growing, and I'll talk about that in a second, but the primary way early on was just regular meetings. So, our primary partner is the State Emergency Management, and so we meet regularly with them. We have separate regular meetings with both them and the National Weather Service. So, we're all three in the room together and we can better talk about what's working well, or perhaps what could work better. And then we have to do individual outreach. So, we hired a risk communication scientist whose specialty is in doing some of that. So that's going to individual county EMs and talking to them about the things they care about, how they do things. It's going to state agencies and authorities and talking to them in a similar matter, but a lot of it has been, thus far, sort of a very sophisticated trial and error where when we make our briefings and we go to those meetings we'll say, hey, what do you like about these. What do you not like? What do you spend time looking at? What do you not spend time looking at? And finally, the thing that I'm arguably most excited about is we've begun teaching a course to emergency managers on basically Weather 101, and we started that two weeks ago, so we're halfway done, and it's through a program that UAlbany has called a microcredential. So, basically, think of it as a one-credit class that is for students who are not enrolled at the university but just adults or other people outside of the university who want to learn a skill. So, ours is basically a weather basics, how to do a number of things in meteorology, how to understand them. And our audience is emergency managers. And so, we have 15 in our sort of inaugural class. It's a pilot project, but we've had a lot of demand for that. So, I know we're going to be doing more in the future. And at the end, the participants get a little certificate and virtual badge that UAlbany gives them that says they've completed this and have the skill in this task now. And as part of our material that we're sharing, our risk communication scientist comes from Jeanette’s tree, so to speak, and so he's incorporating some of the material that Jeanette just spoke about into the final class of ours, which is focused on communication.
MARY HUNT:
Excellent. It's a great idea. The course, yeah. Jeanette, how about you and the interaction you have with first responders? Do you just share the information? Do you do follow ups with them? Do they reach out to you for sort of next level training? Or how do you how do you stay connected to them? Or how do you interact with them? ‘
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Well, all of those things.So, with the Message Design Dashboard, we went to a lot of conferences and other events that were hosted by states and local organizations to do trainings. All of my… all of the research that was conducted when we were building the dashboard included emergency managers from across the country who participated in virtual interviews and user-design interaction through the researchers who are at the Center for Technology in Government (at UAlbany). They helped tolead that part of the MDD research project. And today, I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn. I use my social media to communicate with emergency managers who then share the publications and lectures that I've given and that my research team have given across their networks. So, we're really utilizing the personal connections that we've developed or that I've developed over the last 20 years to help to get the word out farther. So that's been a learning in itself, trying to understand how to be kind of an influencer online. It's a new skill, but it's something that it's helping to expand the reach. Because I don't have a center with state funding behind it to help to do that. One of the benefits of having turned my Warn Room into an LLC is that I now do that kind of engaged consulting work that like what Nick's able to do with the State Weather Risk Communication Center funding where I have counties and states that reach out to me and invite me to come to do half-day trainings and full-day trainings and to audit their messages and to help them to build message templates. And that's been really fulfilling to be able to do that kind of work. It's very, very small scale, but it's the kind of thing that is taking all of the research we've done in the alert and warning space and helping emergency managers to apply it in new ways, and it's just really makes me incredibly happy to be able to translate this academic research for practitioners and to see them passionate about putting it into practice.
MARY HUNT:
I know Nick said that to me on a couple occasions when I've asked him you know about his job and what's the most rewarding part and he always says that I'm helping people to save lives and property and homes and businesses, so that I know you have a passion for that too. I'm curious Nick, when there's, I guess, an impending… let me ask you this severe or extreme? I always ask you that because I think the layman falls to one term, but you make a distinction between the two.
NICK BASSILL:
So, meteorologists when they talk about severe weather, they pretty much exclusively mean thunderstorms that are very damaging. When the lay person hears severe weather, they more generally think extreme weather. So, some of us that are a little more public facing have tried our best to use phrases like extreme weather, or I prefer impactful weather rather than extreme weather. But fundamentally, we're talking about the same thing if we're using those kinds of words.
MARY HUNT:
So, when there's a day when you know impactful weather is on the horizon, whether it's, you know, hurricanes approaching or a big snowstorm… What is day in the life of SWRCC like as it's coming and you're preparing for it? What's going on?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, so I'll use an example of some extreme rainfall and flooding in New York City just about a week ago. So, we'll come into the office around 7:30 our first person gets there. In this case, she sent out a short morning briefing and coordinated with the state's emergency management public information office to post things to social media, and then we sent out our traditional daily sort of kitchen sink briefing at around 11, and then had additional updates throughout the day in briefing format. Separately, we were asked by the commissioner if she should recommend that state employees working in New York City should leave early to go home to avoid potential flooding later on. And so, we advise on that situation. We gave briefings to her as the course of the day went on, and then as the event unfolds, we'll respond to requests in real time that are more basically the who, what, when, where… how much rain fell in, what amount of time, and where was it, and that sort of thing. And so we're really kind of… it’s a continuum right of from before the event to after the event, and then even once the events over, we're not done yet, because we'll talk to the National Weather Service and hear from them maybe why they made certain decisions so that we can better understand their thought process and communicate that to emergency managers about, hey, why did they do this here. But they didn't do it over there. And generally, there's a very logical reason for that. And I guess I'll finally say that we have some processes in place where we take data that is produced by the New York State Mesonet in real time. So real time rainfall data can be really useful for emergency managers. So, when there's an extreme rainfall event like the one we had in New York City we use certain triggers to automatically detect if a very heavy rainfall event is unfolding and automatically transmit that to the National Weather Service's Slack channel. So Slack is a means of communication, and they can see in real time that a certain location is exceeding perhaps a significant amount of rainfall threshold and issue a flash flood warning.
MARY HUNT:
Clearly, technology is critical to both areas of study and your work, both of you your work. So, I'm sure we hear a lot about artificial intelligence, and I'm sure that you both used artificial intelligence, AI tools in your work all along and relied on that. But I'm just curious, what do you hope for? What do you see? I mean, are there artificial intelligence technologies emerging that you think might kind of take you forward to the next step in your research or in your work? I’m curious how that's going to impact what you do if you, if you think about that at all
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, I think I'm a bit too old to be using to, like, dive into the AI stuff. But with that being said, I did use a few of those techniques about a decade ago, but I'm not savvy enough to be cutting edge in that regard. But thankfully there, there is a great group of grad students at ASRC, the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center here, that are able to dive into that. And so, where I think kind of two things that I think AI is useful for or could potentially be very useful for… one of the things that it’s good at is taking two very different types of data and finding relationships between them. So, we're very good at using weather data, but specifically weather data. But what I what our center and others would like to do are connect the weather data with sort of the impact data, so that emergency managers don't have to do that equation in their head. So, if you have you know how much salt was used during a snowstorm, or how many outages happened during a windstorm, electric outages and so on, then you could put those two pieces together and develop relationships using AI, and then, hopefully better predict things in the future. And then the second way that we haven't started doing this yet, but we're dabbling a little bit, is AI has gotten to the point where it is surprisingly good at creating conversational podcasts like we're doing right now. And so, we've experimented a little bit with putting our briefings that we create into this so that we can create a one- or two-minute conversational podcast because so many of our audience members, emergency managers, aren't the type to be sitting at a computer eight hours a day, right. They're in the car, they're driving somewhere, they're on the go, they're in a meeting. They don't have the time to sit down and digest a lengthy briefing, but they may have the time to say, hey, I'm driving. Just play it for me on the car radio and I'll pick up what I need to know in two minutes. We're not there yet, but I think there's some potential in that.
MARY HUNT:
Very interesting. Jeanette, do you see opportunities AI might have for forwarding the kind of research and work that you do?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
I do. I am not, I am not an early adopter of AI. And in fact, when things started kicking off here at Albany, I wondered, where is this all going to go. Obviously, it's gone really far, really fast. The whole world is involved in AI now, so I think that it was great forward looking of the leadership here, thinking about how do we invest in AI? That being said, I'm I've been really reluctant to embrace AI chat tools for alerts and warnings because of the gravity of the messages and the necessity to get it right. And so, I know there are some PIOs who are playing with AI. I also know that there are a number of private entities and researchers who have utilized the tools that we've built when we developed the Message Design Dashboard, in particular the Warning Lexicon, which is all the data you need to create an AI tool. So, I know that there are groups that have been working on that. No one has come to market yet, and yesterday I signed an agreement to help a small startup company to work on their alert and warning portion of their tool. And so that is coming, but I'm not endorsing anything yet because I haven't seen anything that doesn't have concerns about hallucinating or creating things that might not be accurate when it really, really matters. There's other areas of AI that I know alert and warning experts are really interested in, in particular translation, and some people have said, you know, Google Translate is good enough. And others have said, no, not at all, but Spanish is probably the most advanced across our different hazard spaces in the U.S. And then there are a number of other languages. Every metropolitan area needs to be able to translate alert and warning messages into multiple languages to serve their populations. And so, they're all grasping for what is the tool that they can use to do this. And my hope is that when they find the tool that they will start with good messages, because if you start with a bad message and then translate it into another language, it's still a bad message. And so, if the message design dashboard and the warning lexicon can be the foundation for that translated message, I think that we're moving in the right direction.
MARY HUNT:
You two have worked on a number of projects in the past. I wonder if you want to share anything about a couple of projects that you've worked on. I know you've worked on a project in New York City related to impactful heat, extreme heat, impactful heat. And I know also Erie County, where Buffalo is located. I mean, everyone's you know, Buffalo is the second largest city in New York, and we all know the kind of weather conditions Buffalo can face, and tell us briefly, just tell us a little about…
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, and that project is more focused on wintry weather, lake effects snow. And so, we have the two extremes, both in terms of sides of the state and also types of weather, no but Jeanette and I make a good team because we each have skills that maybe the other one doesn't have. And so much of research is, or I would argue, maybe should be, interdisciplinary, right. So, a lot of the research people want now is interdisciplinary, and I, as I mentioned, I'm a meteorologist, so I know, sort of the physical sciences, what we can do in terms of predicting the weather. And while I may have a layman's education in terms of communication, I don't have any sort of formal communication expertise, right. And so, Jeanette has been formally trained in that regard. And so, when we pair up, she can bring her wealth of expertise we've already talked about on the social science side. And so, when we've done these projects, we pretty much divide them right in half and say, one of us will tackle this part and the other person will tackle the other half of the project.
MARY HUNT:
Now the project in Erie County, I understand, is wrapping up. But what was the nature of that project, Jeannette?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
That’s focused on the extreme cold extreme. It stemmed out of the blizzard in 2022 that resulted in a number of deaths right before Christmas, and there were some concerns about how they were communicating about the weather, the impacts and what people should do to protect themselves. And so, they invited the team as a whole to help them to communicate better. And so, my side of the team has been, gosh, we've done a lot. We started by analyzing all of their social media posts and live-feed messaging during the storm to understand the kinds of language that was being used to communicate about the weather, the temperatures, the impacts of those things, the actions people should take to protect themselves, the actions that the organization was taking to help to manage the event. And so, that was phase one. Phase one was just identifying the language and the frequency of use of that language. And then from there, once we quantified what they had been doing during that week, we turned to focus groups, and so we talked to people in Erie County about the kinds of language that's utilized by those experts and first responders and the county executives and tried to get a sense of how people understand or don't understand the language that's used about these events. And from there we focused on weather terms like wind chill or extreme temperature or values, which is a kind of measurement. We asked people about the use of words like code blue, asked about hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning, and also about things like state of emergency and travel bans to get a real wide range of understanding of the different kinds of language they were using, which obviously extended beyond the weather terms, but it was the language that was utilized by the county executive and others who were communicating on those social media channels. So, we really wanted to understand, do people get what they're trying to say to them. So, when we completed that we then developed a survey that we fielded across the state of New York with an over sample in Erie County so we could compare do Erie County people understand this similarly or differently from people across the state of New York. Because we understand and experience tells us that people who have more experience with a particular kind of hazard should have better knowledge and understanding of that. So we're at the tail end of analyzing that data right now, and I think that the thing that really stands out to me about that research is there's commonly within risk communication approaches this idea that what's going to differ about people's understanding of things is their age, their education, their race, their gender, their income level, the demographic features that make us who we are, but that is not what affects people's understanding in this case, and in most cases, actually. It's really your prior experience with something and your interest in it. So, if you have an interest in the things that that Nick is talking about, you're going to have a better understanding of those terms. And if you've lived through a lake effect snow event, and you know what it means to protect yourself or to warm up body parts that have frostbite. You know how to do it, and you know what's an accurate response, and so in this case, what we're finding is that even though there are people within Erie County who are at higher risk because they are lower income or have less resources, that is not the thing that affects their ability to understand the communication. We have to do a better job of educating and helping people to recognize the threats around them and the language that's being used and that crosses all kinds of people, regardless of where they live and the color of their skin or the amount of money they make. So, it means targeting our approaches to communicating about threats so that we're considering populations differently, and I think that that's an important thing to consider. It's not about our demographics; it's about our education levels around those particular events, and a lot of time it's education, means we've lived it.
MARY HUNT:
How might we translate that into some sort of action that comes out of the research that can better prepare folks to prepare or to respond when an impactful incident occurs? I mean, I suppose it's it goes into policymaking that the people that you're working with in Erie County, hopefully will review. But how do you translate it into action?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Well, I think a lot of it is being aware of the language that's being used. I think it's really great that Nick is doing this translational activity when he meets with, on those regular briefings, with emergency managers and helps them to understand how to communicate it effectively. One of the things that we saw as we were looking across how Erie had been communicating, especially around things like state of emergency or travel bans, it was very difficult to find any sort of an accurate definition or explanation of what those things mean. So, it makes perfect sense that people wouldn't understand what are you telling me that it's a state of emergency, because there's not a comprehensive explanation that's easily accessible online. So, a simple thing is to put up a glossary of terms at the county level, at the state level, and help people to find that information so they can understand what you're trying to communicate if it's terms that aren't used very frequently.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, I will add to that. When we think about vulnerability, whether it's a lake effect storm or a flash flood or something like that, vulnerability is, if you ask us well find the spots that are most vulnerable, or the people who are most vulnerable. You're really asking a very complex question because it could be what areas are more susceptible to the physical thing you care about, whether it's a flash flood. If you're on a mountain top, you're not going to get a flash flood, for example. Or if you're here, we're not going to get lake effect snow in Albany, really. And then there's the predictive vulnerability. Is it a phenomenon that we can't predict? Or are you in an area that say has no radar coverage, and so then meteorologists aren't going to know what's happening there, for example. And then there's the part that Jeanette was just talking about, the am I receiving the communications. Maybe you're at a campground with no cell phones coverage. Maybe you speak another language and all of communications are in English, for example. And even if you go over all of those hurdles, and you've done all of those successfully, are you able-bodied enough? Do you have a helper that can help you? You know, take whatever course of action you need to take. And that's not necessarily easy. And so, what we tried to do in the products that we created for the project with Erie County, as well as the products we'll start to create with the State Weather Risk Communication Center, is at a bare minimum incorporate those vulnerability statistics where we understand them into that hazard. So, if we're saying this particular area is going to experience two feet of snow, let's pull out the statistics there and say what population of them are say seniors living alone, or what population of them are non-English first language, or in need of electricity for medical equipment. And our role isn't to go knock on the doors, but if the emergency managers are armed with that information of saying, hey, there's a co-location here of extreme weather and this sort of unique population vulnerability, maybe I'll make sure to send someone out there and knock on the doors on that block or something like that.
MARY HUNT:
What makes your job particularly complicated, Nick as we mentioned earlier, was that New York State seems to get all kinds of weather. We think of areas of the country where they worry about earthquakes or mudslides or tornadoes or hurricanes, but here in New York State, we can be touched by most of those. Is that correct?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah. So, the statistic that I or the phrase, I guess, that I often like to use is that New York is the only state in the country that can have both a hurricane make landfall on its shoreline and have lake effect snow directly impacted, in terms of on its shoreline as well. And so, there's no other state where that is true. And so I have been using that as a sort of easy to understand reference that we have a variety of weather but our lead meteorologist at our center sort of did the stats, so to speak, where she looked at every single state and looked at the unique types of weather advisories or warnings or watches that have been issued by the National Weather Service in that state, and counted up all of the unique ones across all of the different states. And we're second only to California, I believe. But ahead of Texas. And New York is notably, it's a big state, but it's so much smaller than Texas and California, and so we are sort of punching above our weight in terms of the variety of weather hazards we can have here in New York.
MARY HUNT:
And you mentioned Texas, and I'm sure you both watched the response to and the aftermath of the Texas floods with great interest and empathy and a critical eye as professionals who work in the area of disaster response and predicting impactful weather and events. What was going through your minds as you were watching as it was happening, and then, as I say, in the aftermath, just kind of your thoughts and reflections on that?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, I'll say there are sort of two big things for me as a meteorologist who just loves looking at the weather, and if we can separate just for a moment, the human component to that, just many people were sort of in awe of just what was happening meteorologically, you know, the heavy rainfall and its stationarity… were just in awe and impressed by that. But then it was happening overnight, right. And you don't, we didn't necessarily know the reports overnight of, tragically, how many people were lost, and as those started filtering out the next morning and the next day, obviously, you know that sort of awe in the beginning, that was more of like a oh, that's a neat thing, was more of a tragic kind of awe and turned to questions about was it well predicted. Was the message communicated well? What could people have done better? Were the impacts that we've seen at the National Weather Service somehow related. In the follow-up stories and interviews that I've done with that I kept getting asked, have the cuts we've seen to the National Weather Service did they cause this. Were they related? And my answer was always, I think the forecast would have been the same regardless, but some of the National Weather Service offices down there were missing key senior personnel. And so, while the forecast may have been the same, was it communicated the same? Would an emergency manager at a county that was affected… he or she not make a phone call that maybe they would have normally made because the person they call wasn't working anymore? Those things are very hard to answer, and I don't know, but it's hard not to think about them.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, Jeannette…
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
When I think about this particular event, and from a warning perspective, it is the case that is waking people up because they recognize that it could happen to them. In this case, thinking about how the information was shared from the National Weather Service, the weather forecast office there, they issued a warning at one in the morning and then an emergency alert at four in the morning. And an emergency is… the warning went out as a wireless emergency alert, but then the emergency went out at four in the morning as another wireless emergency alert. And the way that those messages, ah very timely… it reached some people, didn't reach everybody. The WEAS that are issued by the Weather Service don't include location specific information in the message itself. So that's a real challenge for people if they don't recognize themselves as being in the area of risk. But the gap came from the emergency managers within the... along the rivers, in particular in Kerr County, where the emergency manager, the director, he was ill on July 3 and on July 4, when the flooding occurred, there was no one stepping in. He was literally asleep when all of this was happening. So, it becomes an organizational issue accompanied with messaging because in the future in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, we need to think about the processes, the policies, the backup, when you don't… when you're not well who's your backup to step in. Having people on the same page in terms of understanding who's in charge and who's communicating with the weather service, or who's monitoring those Slack channels. There are a lot of places that attention can be put. And I think there have been, there's been a legislative session in Texas where they've continued to look at this. A really serious set of after-action reviews will identify those key points where things can be put into practice in the future. I'm very hopeful that that's done. When we look at other places across the United States where they've done really serious investigations to try and put in stop gaps for the future, we can think about things like the Lahaina fire in Maui, where they've done a dozen after-action reviews, and are putting into place different strategies to be prepared for the future. And I hope that that's the same kind of thing that happens out of… following Texas. I am personally going down to Austin, Texas to do an eight-hour training with people in the capital region at the end of the month through my LLC. And so, there are people in Texas that are absolutely dedicated and committed to the task of doing better, and one of those things means being better at knowing how to communicate these threats to people who are at risk, and that is, they reached out to me because of my work that was funded on the Message Design Dashboard and because of the Warn Room research. And so, it all comes full circle of having had this opportunity to do this academic research that builds the evidence base for how we can do it better, and then being able to reach out and communicate directly with the people who are going to implement those findings on the ground.
MARY HUNT:
You know, you touched on it a bit Nick. We continue to hear that there will be more changes in federal funding for research that may impact the types of projects that you both work on. I'm curious, do you expect these changes to affect the work you do? Are you making any adjustments because of them? How has it affected you?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, so the center that I've discussed, we're funded by the state, so thankfully, we are insulated from cuts in that manner, but we're still at a university and we do research here, right? And so that research generally comes via federal funding. That's the most common form of it. And here we were about halfway through a project funded by the Department of Homeland Security at the federal level, and that was cut. That project was cut about four days after the Texas floods. And the topic of the project, the whole point of it, was to build a weather-alerting dashboard for emergency managers in the case of extreme weather. So basically, the exact topic that we just saw occur tragically in Texas. Now the problem is that the dashboard had basically already been created, and we were transitioning into sharing it with state emergency managers. That was the last phase. So, we made the thing and then we're told to stop working on it. And so now we couldn't take the next step of sharing it with folks. And so that's pretty tragic on a couple different levels there for me, but those sorts of stories, I think, are you'll find duplicated across many faculty and researchers here at UAlbany and across the country.
MARY HUNT:
Jeannette, any changes that you'll be making or effect on your research?
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
So, our funding from FEMA ended in May, and that was because the contract actually had concluded. So, we completed all of the tasks that we had said we would deliver on and left no data unturned. Published on every experiment and content analysis that we did, we turned into a publication. And so, we've published about 12 papers from that project, all out in the public domain for emergency managers to use right now. However, we had had conversations with FEMA about continuing our work to help them to expand their capabilities, looking at other languages, how to more effectively communicate over the Emergency Alert System, which is audible, the use of visuals and icons in other kinds of alerting tools and platforms like next gen television, and so we had all these plans that they're not going to happen anytime soon, that I'm aware of. But I think the other projects that we're, I, my lab, has been working on are also coming to an end. And as the federal landscape changed, I didn't, and also because we were kind of lulled into a promise that we were going to get additional funding, I didn't pursue additional funding. So, with that, at the end of August, all of my researchers will be off on new jobs outside of the university, and I personally will be cutting back to half-time at the university and focusing on my LLC to help get the knowledge that we've been gathering into the hands of practitioners. And I… it's the best way to do that is to do this as a private entity and continue my work with the university on a more part-time basis so that I still can do translation of the research we've been collecting into application for practitioners.
MARY HUNT:
Hopefully people will see the value of the work and things may change and I wish you both well with your important work. Hurricane season is upon us, and snow is not far to follow, so I'm sure there will be much more work to be done in the near future for both of you. Thanks for helping to keep us safer and keep up the good work. We need you guys. Thanks for being my guests today.
JEANNETTE SUTTON:
Thank you.
NICK BASSILL:
Thanks for having us.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr Jeanette Sutton is an associate professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany. Dr Sutton specializes in disaster and risk with a primary focus on online informal communication and public alerts and warnings disseminated via terse messaging channels. Much of her research investigates the evolving role of information and communication technology, including social media and mobile devices for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Dr Nick Bassill is a meteorologist and the director of the Statewide Weather Risk Communication Center. The center provides rapid, tailored, real time weather information to help state agencies, emergency managers and other critical stakeholders prepare for and respond to severe weather events.
For more information on Dr Sutton's and Dr Basill's work, visit the resource page for this podcast online at the dash engagement dash ring dot simplecast dot com.
The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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