Impact of a workshop with visualization and ethics discussion on awareness of flood risk and intent to protect

Disasters such as storm surge flooding pose an escalating threat to
vulnerable coastal communities. While advances in weather models and
forecasts are essential for informing protective actions, improving
communication with the public for heightened storm preparedness is equally
important. In this report, we provide a quantitative evaluation of lessons
learned in an online workshop involving over 150 college students. The
workshop employed simulated visuals of flooding and role-playing scenarios
about a fictitious college campus. In addition, we used an "Ethical
Matrix" (EM) tool to enable stakeholders to systematically represent,
discuss, understand, and weigh tradeoffs and perspectives pertaining to
potential impacts of anticipated flooding from an impending hurricane.
Building on a brief overview of the workshop (Colle et al. 2023), this
report presents quantitative and qualitative results from hypotheses about
the workshop’s effects on feelings of worry, intent to take protective
action, and increased awareness of others’ situations and concerns. These
findings provide insights for refining hypotheses and designs for testing
workshops with communities vulnerable to storm surge flooding.