“The lesson from Typhoon Haiyan was that candour, transparency and statements supported by facts are valuable when communicating risk.” – Ms Lesley Cordero
On 17 January 2018, IPUR invited three distinguished industry practitioners to share their insights on risk and crisis communication through real life applications. They were Mr Peter Ho, NUS Trustee and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Strategic Futures; Professor Richard Clegg, Chief Executive of Lloyd’s Register Foundation; and Ms Lesley Cordero, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist at the World Bank Group.
The speakers dived into macro-level issues, case studies as well as insights from personal experience.
From the government policy perspective, Mr Ho spoke about black elephants – the proverbial elephant in the room that is visible to everyone but which no one wants to deal with and so pretend as if it does not exist. He pointed out that when faced with high-impact risks, consensus on priority for resource allocation for risk mitigation strategies must be achieved through communication.
Prof Clegg shared real-life case studies of how misguided public perception of risk had a negative economical impact. An example he cited were the costly delays for the relocation of the Tsukiji fish market which were attributed to unfounded public fears of the new facility not being safe as it was built on contaminated soil.
Ms Cordero spoke of her experience in managing the Typhoon Haiyan crisis in 2013 as former Undersecretary of the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines.
The event was attended by over 80 people and was organised in conjunction with IPUR’s inaugural Executive Education Programme “Understanding and Communicating Risks: Fact, Fears and Fallacies” held from 15 to 18 January. An article on NUS News can be found here.
