The International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) and Monaghan County Council have secured funding under the Shared Island Research Funding 2023 as part of the All-Island Disaster Risk Reduction Research Programme.
This 10-month programme will examine current public safety messaging in border communities on the island of Ireland, specifically as it relates to environmental hazards such as flooding. Working with the Cross Border Emergency Management Group and two cross border communities in close proximity to each other – namely Clones in County Monaghan and Lisnaskea in County Fermanagh – the study will include a number of strands:
- An analysis of how public safety messaging is currently understood by different parts of the community;
- An engagement with first responders and key policy-makers on how public safety messaging is framed, disseminated and acted upon;
- A review of international good practice of cross-border cooperation in public safety messaging; and
- The co-design of public safety messaging templates for a number of emergency scenarios that can be utilised on both sides of the border.
The ICLRD team is being led by Dr. Cormac Walsh, a Senior Research Associate with ICLRD and colleagues from the Department of Psychology, the Business School and the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) in Maynooth University. Preliminary results are due to be presented at the Second All Island Disaster Risk Reduction Conference in November 2023; with the final report due in March 2024.
