Inclusive Emergency Communications in Multilingual Contexts: Disaster Risk Reduction Practice

This book explores what is required to adopt an inclusive approach to emergency communications in multilingual and multicultural societies. This book explores what is required to adopt an inclusive approach to emergency communications in multilingual and multicultural societies. The increased frequency and severity of emergencies such as floods, fires and heatwaves is occurring at the same time that complex migration patterns are producing diverse multilingual and multicultural populations. This convergence raises two crucial questions: What does best practice now look like in emergency communications? And what are the barriers to doing this well? Drawing on multidisciplinary expertise and reflecting on interviews with people from migrant and refugee backgrounds, the arguments engage with the role and limitations of new technologies in emergency communication, as well as the challenges of social inclusion of vulnerable populations during emergency situations. This research offers important conceptual insights as well as practical guidance for leaders involved in emergency planning and disaster risk reduction.