Item 3: expanding our knowledge and thinking
The lessons digest (discussed in part 2 of 5) also introduces new government guidance from the gov office for science: systems thinking for civil servants – And you may be thinking well that seems a bit far out of my remit, as a comms professional? Well no, not entirely when we’re talking about risk and resilience communication. Why? because what we are talking about is interconnected risk, systemic vulnerability and the resilience of what are inherently rather complex systems - taking a system based approach to this, can be particularly helpful. Especially in the context of whole of society resilience. Whole of society is itself a complex theory around a complex system, the integrated emergency management cycle interconnects and interdicts across the many facets of our social construct. But why do we care as resilience comms professions? As the digest explains: Considering how these systems operate, connect and interact is an important step when designing and developing implementation strategies interventions of change. Learning from Storm Arwen highlighted the need to think about the systems we work in. These included: communication systems themselves, and from there we can consider the elements of our system we are often communicating or relaying information to the public about; Risk, health, utilities, emergency management, response, early warning systems, recovery systems and many more aspects when we begin to consider the intricacies of sustainable development, and complex climate change.
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