On the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Overview web page by NOAA it states:
“In 2017, there were 16 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States. These events included 1 drought event, 2 flooding events, 1 freeze event, 8 severe storm events, 3 tropical cyclone events, and 1 wildfire event. Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 362 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. The 1980–2017 annual average is 5.8 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2013–2017) is 11.6 events (CPI-adjusted).
More notable than the high frequency of these events is the cumulative cost, which exceeds $300 billion in 2017 — a new U.S. annual record. The cumulative damage of these 16 U.S. events during 2017 is $306.2 billion, which shatters the previous U.S. annual record cost of $214.8 billion (CPI-adjusted), established in 2005 due to the impacts of Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.”
Despite this reality, the Ad Council reports that 69% of Americans do not have a family emergency plan in place. Yikes!
During times of disaster, neighbors are often each other’s first responders. Research shows that neighbors who already know each other and have an easy way to communicate have a better chance of recovering quickly.
The question then becomes: how can emergency management agencies get a generally apathetic public to prepare, especially those who have not yet experienced a catastrophe?
The emergency management field has identified two main takeaways. First, the message and messenger are vital for success. Second, for significant progress to be made around preparedness, the conversation needs to happen at scale and at the neighborhood level.
In this playbook, I co-authored with four emergency management Nextdoor partners, you will learn how your agency can utilize Nextdoor for Public Agencies and its Polling feature to increase resilience at the neighborhood level across your municipality in an impactful and innovative way.
Neighbors in over 85% of U.S neighborhoods (160,000+) rely on Nextdoor, the private social network for neighborhoods, for everyday things like finding a babysitter or getting recommendations for a handyman.
During disasters, neighbors turn to Nextdoor for more critical things like alerting each other to an oncoming storm or asking for help putting up hurricane shutters. Before Hurricane Matthew hit, neighbors who were not able to put up hurricane shutters themselves asked for and received help from their fellow neighbors on Nextdoor. Following evacuation orders, displaced neighbors stayed connected on Nextdoor. Many asked those who had already returned to the neighborhood for an update about the status of their homes and for photos of damage so they could apply for disaster assistance and submit insurance claims.
As adoption of Nextdoor has flourished, emergency managers are increasingly turning to Nextdoor for Public Agencies, which is now utilized by over 2,800 public agencies nationally. Emergency managers can use Nextdoor to:
Target messages into specific neighborhoods, service areas, or hazard zones
Inform residents about watches, warnings, and local hazards
Educate them about available programs like CERT
Activate them to take shelter or evacuate
Encourage community-building; neighbors are often each other’s first responders
By expanding the number of residents you can engage with on Nextdoor for Public Agencies, you can expect to increase preparedness and resilience across your jurisdiction.
Nextdoor Polls for Public Agencies was first developed by Nextdoor to support the White House Police Data Initiative. The feature allows all Nextdoor public agency partners to ask their residents questions and quantify the results quickly. Nextdoor Emergency Management partners have used Nextdoor Polls in several innovative ways as you will see in the next section.
Polls can be targeted to a single Nextdoor neighborhood, a group of neighborhoods, or an agency’s entire service area. Poll responses are completely anonymous. Nextdoor residents can cast a single vote until the public agency closes the poll, at which point the results are displayed. Agency staff can download poll data and filter results by neighborhood and by service area. Residents can also add replies to the poll, which are not anonymous and display the member’s first name, last initial, and neighborhood name.
To reinforce the message of a poll, we recommend that you add a discussion six days after you posted the polls with the correct answer and explain how taking corresponding protective actions can help them recover more quickly, save their lives, and protect property.
Should you wish to measure an increase in preparedness, you can ask the same poll question at a later time and normalize for growth in the membership.
In the poll below, Steven Pyle, Deputy Coordinator from Norfolk Department of Emergency Preparedness and Response, asked his residents if they had flood insurance. In addition to the votes that it received, a healthy conversation also arose about the value of having flood insurance from neighbors in high and low flood hazard areas.
Mary Jo suggests that if you choose to do a similar poll to your residents, be sure to add a third option — “I’m registered, but I didn’t receive the message.”
Joe Corona, Outreach Coordinator for Montgomery County MD OEMHS was looking for community input to help his team decide which translation they should provide next for their emergency materials.
Keep in mind that Nextdoor Polls for Public Agencies are multiple choice polls. Multiple choice lists must be exhaustive to measure responses accurately. Each response option must be distinct and clear. In some cases, you may need to leave an “Other” poll response to allow respondents to reply with their unique information in the comments section. Also, it is important to note that Nextdoor Polls allow residents to choose only one answer.
To allow members the ability to provide comments outside the poll choices, with Nextdoor Polls you can accept the default setting to allow discussions. By doing so, you encourage open-ended responses. Open-ended responses make it possible to receive input that you may not have considered, and provide valuable insights.
Below are some helpful questions to ask yourself in order to clarify the purpose of your poll:
It may be helpful to communicate:
Nextdoor Polls are designed to be simple. Only one question can be asked at once and you may offer up to 10 multiple choice options. If you want to ask multiple questions, let your members know that you will be creating multiple polls over a given period of time.
Each multiple choice option must be distinct and clear. In some cases, you may need to leave an “Other (add comments in the ‘reply’ section below)” poll response to allow respondents to reply with their unique information. Consider leaving a “Does Not Apply” or “Decline to State” to determine if respondents are skipping a question. This gives you the ability to go back and rephrase your question at a later time.
You can derive significant information using qualitative questions, or open-ended questions. On Nextdoor, this is accomplished by allowing residents to reply to a poll, thus spurring further discussion. As a Nextdoor Public Agency partner, you may close replies at any time.
Remember that many of your residents will not understand acronyms and technical terms that are familiar to you and your colleagues. Use www.plainlanguage.gov to find alternative ways to communicate to a broader audience
You cannot edit a poll once it has been posted. Be sure to check for correct information and spelling before posting your poll.
Gathering quality statistics from Nextdoor polls also means sampling your audience properly for adequate representation. Use a sampling calculator like this Survey Monkey Sample Size Calculator. You may need to do two calculations: (1) the actual population within a neighborhood and (2) the Nextdoor population within that neighborhood. If your Nextdoor population exceeds your actual population sample size and you get a high response rating, you may have statistically significant responses. Significance is typically reported at 95% Confidence and 5% Confidence Interval.
Some of your questions may be relevant to the entire community, or portions of the community. The default maps within Nextdoor allow you to select the entire service area or as many neighborhoods as necessary. Additionally, your department has the ability to upload your own custom service areas, which you can then target with your poll.
You can use Nextdoor Polls to create a rating style question. Odd numbered responses allow a middle choice, or “fence sitting,” which is often selected on more controversial questions. On the next page, you will find example scales.
Appendix — Additional poll examples
General preparedness poll questions:
For the above questions:
Note that you can modify questions like these to say something like, “Do you agree that it is important to have a go kit?”
Subject: Does your family make the grade? Rate your family’s preparedness.
Body: An “A” rating is an individual or family who: has a go kit with clothing, documents, personal items (medications, glasses), food, and water ready to go; has identified a safe place to go to if they had to evacuate; has a plan to stay in touch with family members either through phone numbers or social media (or both); has an emergency savings account to afford deductibles or emergency purchases; practices their plan with their family; and gets involved in the community, ready to help their neighbors.
Poll Choices:
Final discussion response before closing discussions:
Subject: (Community specific) In the event of an emergency, which of the following sources for news could help you stay informed?
Body: Please select one of the choices below. We’ll post the answer next week!
Poll Choices:
Final discussion response before closing discussions:
Subject: When was the last time you reviewed your emergency kit and/or checked your fire alarms?
Body: Please select one of the choices below. We’ll post a follow up next week!
Poll Choices:
Final discussion response before closing discussions:
Subject: Test your knowledge! Is it ok to take shelter the same way for a hurricane (or earthquake depending on location) as a tornado?
Body: Answer will be posted on [date/time].
Final discussion response before closing discussions:
Subject: Which sources do you primarily use to receive updates from our agency?
Body: Please take one minute to tell us your primary source for getting news from our department. This will help us better understand where we should focus our communications. We may ask further questions in the future.
Poll Choices:
Subject: If you had to prioritize one type of information you would like to receive from our agency, which one below would it be?
Body: Pick one option below. Based on your answers, we will do our best to make sure that we are communicating helpful information.
Poll choices:
Subject: How often do you want to hear from our agency on Nextdoor?
Body: Pick one option below. Based on your answers, we will adjust our posting frequency as we are able.
Poll choices:
Subject: Which best describes your involvement with CERT (Community Emergency Response Team)?
Body: Please pick one option that best describes your involvement. Based on your answers, we will be sure to reach back out with the appropriate information.
Poll choices:
This document would not have been possible without the generosity of time and expertise from the Nextdoor for Public Agencies partners listed below. Thank you!
Apply for a free Nextdoor agency account today at business.nextdoor.com/en-us/public-agency
Sign up: https://nextdoor.com/city/apply/