The Problem

I'm an English Writing and Studio Arts major and am currently working in marketing for the American Red Cross Southwestern Pennsylvania Chapter. My employment involves risk communication every day and there are many obstacles to overcome. The biggest obstacle for the Red Cross is that we deal primarily with response - we help people recover from disasters like house fires and floods on a daily basis.

In order for risk communicators to do our job better, we need people to be more prepared and to fully be aware of these risks. For this reason, I'd like to fully explore risk communication involving flooding. Certain areas of Pittsburgh are extremely susceptible to flooding, so demographics and geography will play a big part in risk communication.

As we've seen in recent months, flooding has been at the forefront of the local news - mainly because it happens over and over again in the same places. This is a red flag to me that risk communication can be improved. Whether it's flood insurance, flood prevention or flood recovery, all aspects of flood events can use improvement.

Floods are an unfortunate event because they often strike the same areas over and over again. It is for this reason that I'm intrigued by improving risk communication in this arena. The biggest challenge with these topics will be discovering an effective way to improve risk communication, as these issues have been present for a very long time.