Mind mapping in qualitative data analysis: Managing interview data in interdisciplinary and multi‐sited research projects

Typically, interviews are transcribed to enable coding and analysis of the data to establish the research findings. However, where discourse is not central, this article argues that mind mapping is a valuable tool to identify relationships and differences across large datasets. This is particularly useful for large-scale research projects that may also be interdisciplinary and/or multi-sited where the ability to transcribe and analyse audio-recordings is often a time-intensive process for the researcher and costly if outsourced. Additionally, there are challenges to analysing vast amounts of text into something meaningful. This article first reviews what mind maps are, and how they work. Second it explores the value of mind maps in qualitative data collection and analysis, particularly in the role of transcription. Third, using research conducted on volcano alert level systems, a methodology using mind maps to analyse interview recording is established. Fourth, the pros and cons of mind maps and potential application in other qualitative research methods and in different academic fields is discussed. Findings demonstrate that mind maps can be highly time beneficial providing a close and intimate reading of the data and enabling the researcher to make sense of the emerging themes, particularly for large data sets typically collected through multi-sited research, or smaller research projects with limited resources

Assigning a volcano alert level: negotiating uncertainty, risk, and complexity in decision-making processes

A volcano alert level system (VALS) is used to communicate warning information from scientists to civil authorities managing volcanic hazards. This paper provides the first evaluation of how the decision-making process behind the assignation of an alert level, using forecasts of volcanic behaviour, operates in practice. Using interviews conducted from 2007 to 2009 at five USGS-managed (US Geological Survey) volcano observatories (Alaska, Cascades, Hawaii, Long Valley, and Yellowstone), two key findings are presented here. First, that observatory scientists encounter difficulties in interpreting scientific data, and in making decisions about what a volcano is doing, when dealing with complex volcanic processes. Second, the decision to move between alert levels is based upon a complex negotiation of perceived social and environmental risks. This research establishes that decision-making processes are problematic in the face of intrinsic uncertainties and risks, such that warning systems become complex and nonlinear. A consideration of different approaches to negotiating uncertainty and risk that are deliberative would, therefore, be beneficial in volcanic hazard management insofar as these suggest effective practices for decision-making processes in assigning an alert level

Enhancing Warnings

Warnings are part of our everyday life, whether traffic lights, food health warnings, the weather, advice from colleagues, or moralistic stories. Warnings serve to provide cautionary advice, give advance notice of something, and generate awareness to trigger consequent decisions and actions. Warnings are seldom considered beyond the issuance of a warning, yet warnings are far more complex, requiring a comprehensive tool and system to help implement preventative, mitigative, and disaster risk-reductive actions. Warnings are not just a siren or phone alert but should be a long-term social process that is a carefully crafted, integrated system of preparedness involving vulnerability analysis and reduction, hazard monitoring and forecasting, disaster risk assessment, and communication. Together, these activities enable a wide range of leaders and others – such as individuals, local groups, governments, and businesses – to take timely and effective action to reduce disaster risks in advance of hazards. Warnings are represented via different iconographies and communicated via different mediums that usually express some form of threshold or tipping point. These vary enormously contingent on the hazard, and social, political, and economic context of the warning. Warnings should provide actionable guidance that is integrated into everyday life and behaviour, providing transparency and credibility to help manage risk in emerging and ongoing situations. Warnings must operate beyond the silos frequently seen in institutions, for different vulnerabilities, different hazards, and different stakeholders to become a long-term social process that can serve to bring together these diverse issues. This report examines how this can be implemented providing key case-study examples of lessons learnt and guidance on how to build effective warning systems. To enhance a warning requires placing it as part of a warning system, a long-term social process that embodies the 3 I’s ( Imagination, Initiative, Integration) and 3 E’s (Education, Exchange, Engagement). The authors offer three recommendations and provide guidance on how to implement these recommendations: Develop effective warnings that consider multiple-hazards, cascading events, and integration across stakeholders. Adopt a public engagement and outreach programme that empowers people to identify and fulfil their own needs regarding warnings for enhancing preparedness and response behaviours and actions. Create and support mechanisms to overcome silos and territorialism and instead encourage idea and action exchange for building trust and connections that support action when a major situation arises

The Core Pillar: Ensuring Success Of The Early Warnings For All Initiative

• Disasters are a result of our social (including political, technological, and economic)environment; these enabling environmental factors must be considered fully in the Early Warnings for All Initiative to make sure warnings serve everyone. • People centred approaches and active stakeholder partnerships are needed to establish effective warnings. • The current Early Warnings for All Initiative Executive Action Plan risks failure as the four pillars operate in silos and people-centred approaches are not considered across all four pillars. • We propose to implement a “Core Pillar” to facilitate cross pillar collaboration and integration that includes the engagement of the wider community and most vulnerable. • Without this the Early Warnings for All Initiative may fail, resulting in billions spent on warnings that are not fit for the needs of those who are facing the risks and will not achieve the outlined impacts, with warnings continuing to operate in silos, and potentially causing more harm than benefit

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Editorial: Early warning systems for pandemics: lessons learned from natural hazards

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Systemic risks perspectives of Eyjafjallajökull volcano's 2010 eruption

In 2010, southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, releasing ash that spread across Europe. Due to its potential to damage aircraft, much of European airspace was closed for six days. Known problems were brought to the forefront regarding the anticipation of and response to systemic risks. To contribute a deeper understanding of this situation, this paper explores this disaster through its fundamental causes and cascading impacts, highlighting perspectives from disaster risk reduction, complexity sciences, and health in order to support analysis and resolution of systemic risks. Two principal future directions emerge from this work. First, how to manage dependency on air travel. Second, how to think about and act to avert future calamities

Time horizon : intersections of deep time and biographical time on the West Shore, Stromness, Orkney

What is the significance of a human life in relation to the timespan of the geological processes that shape and reshape the terrain under our feet? Here, we ask how we might think on a planetary scale while being grounded in the everyday, tracing the relationship between biographical time and geological formation. Examining social relationships through the materiality of sandstone, uranium, and concrete, this paper presents a collaborative deep time practice, realised through the iterative process of walking, reading and inscribing a specific site, the West Shore of Stromness, Orkney.PostprintPeer reviewe

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