What are the four components of an effective incident notification message? How about the DA 4 - 3 & 30 - 60 & 6 rule? If not, then it is possible that your recipients are not sure what you are trying to say when reading your messages. Are you concerned about planning your messages, when to send them, and how to make them clear and concise? From seasoned veterans to newbies, we could all use a refresher class every now and then when it comes to something as critical as incident notification.

1. Incident Notification Message Anatomy 101
Robert Chandler, Ph.D.
Director of the Nicholson School, University of Central Florida
Marc Ladin
Chief Marketing Officer, Everbridge

2. About Everbridge
• Everbridge empowers better decisions with
interactive communications throughout the
incident lifecycle to protect your most important
assets
• Recognized in the 2012 Gartner Magic
Quadrant on Emergency / Mass Notification as
a Leader in the industry
• Everbridge helps more than 30 million people
communicate in a crisis and connect on a daily
basis.
• The company’s notification platform is backed
by an elastic infrastructure model that delivers
near infinite scale, advanced mobile
connectivity, and real-time reporting and
analytics.
• More than 1,000 organizations in over 100
countries rely on Everbridge for their
emergency needs
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3. Agenda
Agenda
Part 1: Presentation
• How to address today's notification challenges
• Fundamental rules you need to know to create effective
messages
• Best practices for incident messaging
Part 2: Q&A
Are you on Twitter? Follow us at @everbridge and
tweet insights with your friends during the webinar
using the hashtag #everbridge
3

4. Q&A
Note:
Presentation slides are available on our blog
at Blog.everbridge.com
Use the
Q&A
function to
submit your
questions.
4

5. Bracing for the 2010
Incident Notification Message
Hurricane Season
Anatomy 101
Dr. Robert Chandler
University of Central Florida

6. Communication since the dawn of time
“
“ Early humans probably adapted warning calls
and cries to alert one another of potential
dangers (e.g., predators or natural disasters)
once they banded together in social groups,
much like other species of mammals still do to
this day
Dr. Robert C. Chandler
Emergency Notification
(2010) p.20

7. Challenges for effective notification

8. Expectations of the communication
audience
• Information
• Financial impact
• Safety
• Organizational responsibility
• Causation
• Consequences and effects
• Projections for recovery
• Return to normal operations

9. Four challenges unique to emergency
communication
1. Impact of technology breakdown
2. Extraordinarily high levels of stress
3. Events occur rapidly
4. Aggressive demands for information and analysis from
the media and the public

10. The main categories of incident
communication issues
Participation
Barriers
C-3
Inefficiencies
Collaboration
Issues • Command
• Control
• Coordination
Information
Quality and
Communication

11. The crux of the notification challenge
“
“ Contacting the right people at the right time with
the right message is the basic challenge for
effective emergency notification.
Dr. Robert C. Chandler
Emergency Notification
(2010) p.153

12. What helps counter these challenges?
• Recognizing management and communication challenges
• Analyzing your audience
• Looking at ways to improve your crisis communication plan

13. Communication Processing Impairment
Low Stress High Stress
Info processed at
Recipients Recipients
Info processed at -4 grade
process average process average
average grade (average) levels
of 7 messages of 3 messages
level (about 10th from low stress
per Grade in general per
(about 6th grade
communication population) communication
in general
episode episode
population)
Cognitive Abilities
Normal<-------------------- Diminished
Routine misinterpretation Increased Confused
Routine misunderstandings Inability to focus
Assumptions Easily distracted
Sequential Errors Increased Misinterpretation
Increased Misunderstandings
Unable to complete complex critical thinking
Robert C. Chandler, Ph.D. © 2010

14. The good and the bad of
incident notification

15. Effective communication strategies
• Be first, be right, be credible
• Acknowledge with empathy
• Explain and inform about risk
• Describe what you know, don’t know, and what you’re
doing about it
• Commit to continued
communication
• Keep communication
channels open

16. How information is processed
• Cognitive processing capabilities and
stress, distress, and duress
• Perceived risk changes
• Information loading (cognitive limits)
• Attitude-behavioral consistency theory
• Uncertainty reduction theory
• Situation awareness
• Selective attention
• Reaction time changes

17. How information is processed
Determine what and how you should communicate by
assessing how people understand, interpret, and act on
messages during critical events.

18. Reaction time
Factors that affect reaction time include:
• Recognition
• Choice
• Number of stimuli
• Fatigue
• Reasoning
• Remembering
• Imagining
• Learning

19. Four basic functions an incident
notification message must meet
1. Information
2. Meta-message
3. Behavioral request and instructions
4. Feedback request

20. Four components of effective emergency
notification messages
Information Urgency
Message
Instructions Confirmation

21. Anatomy of an emergency
notification message
DA 4 - 3 & 30 - 60 & 6
Danger - Action Structure
4 Key Components
3 sentences & 30 words
60 readability score & 6th
grade reading level
(Chandler Method)

22. More effective emergency notification
messages
• Front-load key information into the first 30 words/30
seconds
• Be sensitive to the needs of different demographic
groups including languages, co-cultural groups, needs
agenda, etc.

23. Chandler 60 & 6 Rule
• Research indicates that the typical person’s reading
comprehensive levels drop about 4 grade levels during
emergencies and crisis situations
• For the general population – the closer you can write to
the 6th grade reading level the more comprehension and
understanding can be forecast during emergency
situations

24. Chandler 60 & 6 Rule
• The reading ease scores provide a baseline from which
we can judge the relative ease that an individual will be
able to easily read our messages (during an emergency)
• The higher the score the easier the message is to read
(for the general population, the optimal zone would be
a score of at least 60 – to the highest, which is 120)
• One dimension of effective emergency communication
is to write (and revise) in ways that provide the right
mix of readability ease and reading grade level

25. Six Stages of a Communication Crisis
Crisis Lifecycle Analysis:
What do we communicate, when, and how do we say it?

26. Example warning: Katrina
WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN
SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
...DEVASTATING DAMAGE
EXPECTED...
ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE
FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE
OUTSIDE!
MOST OF THE AREA
WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR
WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER.
Excerpts from Hurricane Katrina warning from National Weather Service, New Orleans, LA

27. Example communication:
NASA Facebook Page
NASA's Hurricane Web Page
SO. INDIAN OCEAN - We're watching System 97S today. This TRMM satellite image
from yesterday (4/4) shows some heavy rainfall (red) southwest of the center. Today, the
center has moved east over Madagascar. Max. sustained winds near 20 knots, 1007
millibars. Center near 171 South, 43.5 East. Currently 97S has a low chance of
development, because of its interaction with land (its over Madagascar)- which you can
see in this METSAT image from today:
NASA's Hurricane Web Page
November 11, 2011
ATLANTIC*Update*- Tropical Storm Sean at 8 am AST was about 80 miles NNW of
Bermuda with max. winds near 60 mph **Sean has sped up and is moving to the NE at
22 mph. Pressure: 989 mb. This GOES-13 image from 9am EST shows the swirl of
clouds that is Sean.
27

28. Incident Notification
Marc Ladin
Chief Marketing Officer, Everbridge
28

29. Incident Notification Solutions Address
Common Communication Challenges
• Reduce miscommunications • Communicate quickly, easily,
and control rumors with and efficiently with large
accurate, consistent messages numbers of people in minutes,
not hours, making sure that the
• Satisfy regulatory lines of communication are open
requirements with extensive and
complete reporting of • Receive feedback from your
communication attempts and messages by using polling
two-way acknowledgements from capabilities
recipients
• Ensure two-way
• Deliver refined, prepared , communications to get
timed messages to each pre- feedback from message
designated audience group, by receivers
scenario
29

30. Everbridge Advantages
Existing Notification Vendor’s
Infrastructure:
• Static algorithms based on capacity
limitations, not actual call volumes
during a disaster
- Failure-prone from unexpected
volumes of message output
- No ability to burst to meet wide-scale
system usage
The Everbridge Advantage:
• Near-infinite scale achieved
- Multiple redundant VoiP & PSTN
providers
- Elastic capacity accommodates
highest volume of outbound calls in
the industry

31. Everbridge’s Elastic Infrastructure Model
• What is it?
• Elastic infrastructure integrates
with multiple, redundant on-
demand communications
providers
• Provides near infinite scale,
capacity, performance and
processing resources
• Dynamically looking into
performance and proactively
enhance the performance of
notifications delivered
• Provable, measurable
performance through
Everbridge’s mass recipient
emulator

32. Advanced Connectivity for a Mobile World
• Communicate from anywhere, • Support for popular mobile
under any circumstances or platforms (Apple iOS, Android, &
conditions BlackBerry)
• Low-bandwidth optimized to
ensure delivery in adverse
conditions
32

33. Note:
Q&A Presentation slides are available on our blog
at blog.everbridge.com
Use the
Q&A
function to
submit your
questions.
33

34. Contact Information
Thank you for joining us today!
Dr. Robert Chandler
Robert.chandler@ucf.edu
Marc Ladin
Marc.ladin@everbridge.com
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