Pictographs in Disaster Communication for Linguistically Challenged and Illiterate Populations: A Survey on Background and Existing Practices

This article describes how pictographs (or pictograms) can be an important means to communicate information about natural disasters to people that are lacking the capability to understand written text. This does not only include illiterates, but also foreigners not speaking the local language. While it is widely accepted that pictograph-based communication can play a major role, there is no established workflow to include this kind of symbols in early warning or disaster reporting practice. This article investigates the topic of pictograph-based communication systems, especially in the field of natural disasters, with a focus on the use of linguistically challenged populations. The authors analyze existing literature, take a look at existing pictograph resources, analyze a first field study with marginalized populations and derive conclusions for a design process for pictograph-based disaster communication systems.