The Public Response to Hazardous Weather Events: 25 Years of Research

Recent disasters with high numbers of fatalities such as Hurricane Katrina or the 2011 southeastern tornado outbreak demonstrate the need to understand the public's response in extreme weather events. Much of what we know about how an individual responds to a weather hazard comes from case study research on behaviors and perceptions following single events. Because many of the actions are context specific, it is important to periodically review these case studies as a group to identify any trends that cut across hazards or locations. This paper examines research on individual- level response to weather hazards from 1988 to 2012 and identifies similarities among the events. In conducting the review, the author also identified those areas in the response to hazardous weather events that are least frequently studied, including response to extreme heat and winter storms and to a lesser extent the response to flood events in the USA. Subjects covered in many of the papers included how one becomes aware of the hazard, how one responds, and what factors influence the response. Each of these subjects is discussed for each type of event, followed by a summary of the generalizations that may be made from these case studies.