Visual Standards for Southern California Tsunami Evacuation Information: Applications of Information Design in Disaster Risk Management

Community participation and reaction during evacuation is rarely an individual and isolated process and the outcomes are systemic. Ineffective evacuation information can easily attribute to delayed evacuation response. Delays increase demands on already extended emergency personal, increase the likelihood of traffic congestion, and can cause harm to self and property. From an information design perspective, addressing issues in cognitive recall and emergency psychology, this project examines evacuation messaging including written, audio, and visual presentation of information, and demonstrates application of design principles and the role of visual communication for Southern California tsunami evacuation outreach. The niche of this project is the inclusion of cognitive recall of visual presentations of information based on quantitative data of a 4-year cognitive recall study that included over 300 participants as the driving influence in how the messaging was developed, distributed to the community, and formal design decisions were made. The outcome of this work feeds into a current project, Visual Standards for Tsunami Evacuation Information, an open-source tool for communities to create and self-sustain tsunami evacuation information specific to location. The project will act as a hub that provides a “starter kit” for community decision-makers and emergency management that are hoping to create cohesive and branded tsunami evacuation information in place for their city and counties.