HENRY LANSFORD

Visibility degradation--the Denver Brown Cloud--is a familiar phenomenon in the region extending north and south from Denver along the eastern foot of the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. Brown Cloud II (BCII) is a public-private scientific endeavor designed to identify the causes and sources of visible air pollution in the Denver region. The Denver Air Quality Modeling Study (DAQMS) is the principal scientific component of BCII. DAQMS is being conducted by the Boulder-based Assessment/Communication Team (ACT) of the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) with technical support from colleagues at SUNYA and groups in the Denver region. Funding from both public and private sources is being provided through Metro Denver Brown Cloud Study, Inc., a nonprofit consortium with a board of directors that represents federal, state and private interests. The board of directors and a broad-based policy advisory group provide direction and oversight of the work of the SUNYA technical team. A technical committee reviews the work, and a project management team provides an interface between the policy and technical interests.

DAQMS began in 1990 and will conclude in mid-1993. As the study moves into its final stages, communication with people and organizations outside the BCII "family" is becoming an increasingly important and sensitive aspect of the study. (The family includes the board of directors, the policy advisory group, the technical committee, the project management team, the technical team and staff members of participating organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division and the Regional Air Quality Council.) We need to communicate effectively with a number of important target groups, including (but not necessarily limited to):

• policy-makers in federal, state and local government
• corporate managers
• air-quality professionals in Denver-area federal, state and local government agencies
• technical managers in the private sector
• the air-quality research community
• environmental and public-interest organizations
• the news media
• chambers of commerce and other community organizations
• the general public
• the broader community of government and private-sector groups concerned with air quality
• the educational community and libraries.

Diverse approaches and formats are needed to communicate effectively with each of these groups. An external communication plan that is carefully developed and conscientiously applied can be very useful in accomplishing this task efficiently and effectively. It will help ensure that DAQMS results and conclusions are applied in ways that will maximize their practical benefits to the Denver community and beyond, while helping us avoid the inadvertent dissemination of premature, imprecise or incorrect information about DAQMS results and conclusions while the study is still in progress.

COMMUNICATION PLAN

This external communication plan comprises two parts: (1) an assessment of BCII's external communication needs and potential responses and (2) guidelines for implementing the responses that we decide will be most effective.

ANALYSIS OF NEEDS AND RESPONSES

The analysis process begins with five questions:

• Who do we want to communicate with? (target audiences)
• Where are they? (geographical scope)
• Why do we want to communicate with them? (specific rationales)
• What do we want to communicate to them? (tailored information)
• How can it be communicated most effectively? (methods and media).

These simple but fundamental questions provide a useful analytical matrix (see Table 1) for sorting out just what we want to accomplish and how we can go about it most effectively. Answers to the first four questions (who, where, why, and what?) describe needs, and answers to the last one (how?) propose specific responses or media. A summary of some proposed responses follows.

Publications

The following publications are being produced by the technical team with input from the project management team:

DAQMS Final Technical Report. Aimed primarily at scientific and technical readers, this report includes comprehensive and detailed information about everything that was done in DAQMS, from model development through scenarios. It uses highly specialized scientific and technical terminology, chemical formulas, equations, etc.

DAQMS Final Summary Report. Aimed primarily at policy-makers, corporate managers, and others who have a specific interest in DAQMS but are not scientific or technical specialists, this report is shorter than the technical report. It focuses more on results and conclusions than on details of the technical work. It does not use highly specialized scientific and technical terminology, chemical formulas, equations, etc.

Brown Cloud II News Releases. News releases will be written to serve two purposes: (1) to be published as news stories, either verbatim or with editing or (2) to provide information that a reporter can follow up by attending a BCII news conference or interviewing BCII spokespeople. They should be written in journalistic style, with a strong lead; short, direct sentences; and no undefined technical jargon or complex scientific explanations.

Briefings And Presentations

Technical/Policy Briefings usually will be done by three people: one representing the board of directors, one from the project management team and the DAQMS technical director. The briefings will be designed to provide detailed technical and/or policy-related information to people who can use it to deal more effectively with Front Range visibility problems. They normally will be set up at our initiative as part of our basic BCII external communication activity.

Media Briefings. A media briefing should be held in Denver immediately prior to the first policy briefing. If possible, it should take place in the room where the policy briefing will held. The room should be set up for television coverage, with large blow-ups of relevant graphics prominently displayed. The media briefing will begin with a brief overview of BCII and DAQMS and introductions of the people who will speak at the policy briefing. Then each of the speakers will summarize what he or she is going to say at the briefing, and the news conference will be opened to questions. Adequate time will be allowed for individual interviews. Reporters will be invited to attend the policy briefing, and a set of BCII publications will be available for each reporter. Other media briefings may be held, but only if there is new and important information to release that has potential broad public interest.

General Presentations usually will be done by one person. They will be designed to provide a broad overview of DAQMS for technical or general audiences and/or to stimulate interest that can be followed up by providing more detailed technical or policy-related information later. They normally will be directed at "targets of opportunity" rather than comprising part of the basic BCII external communication activity. These presentations usually will be made either by the technical director or a member of the project management team. (For example, on March 5, the technical director, Paulette Middleton, gave a presentation on DAQMS to a delegation of Mexican environmental officials at the request of Morgan Smith, Director of the Colorado International Trade Office.)

GUIDELINES

Communication Management Group

A principal goal of the guidelines is to help us avoid having too many people speaking for BCII and possibly contradicting each other or at least producing conflicting perceptions of the project. (As with the blind men and the elephant, BCII undoubtedly is perceived in many diverse ways by various people who are involved in it.) Primary responsibility for BCII external communications will rest with a communication management group made up of Ben Bryan and Joel Kohn, representing the board of directors; Warner Reeser and Skip Spensley, representing the project management team; and Paulette Middleton and Henry Lansford, representing the technical team.

Media And Policy-Maker Contacts

It is important for our initial contacts with policy-makers and the media to be made through the communication management group. This group should designate a couple of articulate and knowledgeable spokespeople in the BCII family as our authorized contacts for official statements on policy and technical issues. Once the initial external contacts and announcements have been made, we should not try to control policy advisory group members, Colorado Department of Health staff, etc., as far as informal contacts with media people and others are con-cerned. However, they should be encouraged to make it clear that they are speaking for themselves or their organizations. We also should do our best to get everyone to report media contacts so we can keep track of when who said what to whom.

Publications

All of our publications are reviewed in draft form by the communication management group and the policy advisory group. Lansford and Middleton, who are drafting the publications, are working closely with the project management team to coordinate the review process.

Briefings And Presentations

The communication management group will develop specific plans for BCII technical/policy briefings in consultation with the policy advisory group. General presentations will be scheduled as opportunities present themselves, with advance notice provided to the communication management group to allow its members to comment or to provide input (see Attachment 1 for an example.)

High-Priority Tasks

The following tasks must be completed as soon as possible:

1. complete the two basic Brown Cloud II documents: the final technical report and the final summary report

2. have the Brown Cloud II documents printed

3. develop mailing lists for the Brown Cloud II documents

4. distribute the Brown Cloud II documents

5. develop a media mailing list and prepare and distribute a Brown Cloud II news release just prior to the media and policy briefings

6. plan policy briefings for the Governor of Colorado, the Regional Air Quality Council and the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission

7. schedule, set up and conduct policy briefings

8. conduct media briefing in conjunction with policy briefings.

Additional Tasks

The following tasks are optional but could be very effective in disseminating information about Brown Cloud II and the innovative public/private effort through which it was developed and conducted:

1. additional mailings, briefings and presentations for other groups such as environmental and public-interest organizations, chambers of commerce and other community organizations, the broader community of government and private-sector groups concerned with air quality, the educational community and the general public

2. an exhibit at the National Center for Atmospheric Research that would communicate information about Brown Cloud II to some large and influential audiences, including national and international decision-makers and opinion leaders as well as scientists, educators and the general public. See 3/12/93 memo from Henry Lansford to Paulette Middleton (Attachment 2) for details.

Coordination

Lansford is coordinating the BCII external communication effort by managing production of publications, providing staff support for the communication management group and maintaining a clearing house and log of external communication activities and contacts.

Attachment 1

March 1, 1993

Memo to: Ben Bryan, Joel Kohn, Skip Spensley, Warner Reeser

From: Paulette Middleton

Subject: DAQMS Presentation for the Mexican Environmental Delegation

I have been invited to discuss air quality and the DAQMS modeling work in particular with a group of Mexican environmental officials representing the Colorado-Mexico City Air Quality Initiative. The discussion is scheduled for this Thursday, March 4, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder.

According to the Colorado International Trade Office, the group sponsoring their visit, the delegation is most interested in technical details of approaches and analysis tools. Following that guideline, I plan to focus the discussions on our general approach to assessing air quality issues using comprehensive modeling tools.

If you have any materials or suggestions for the presentation that you would like me to share with the group, let me know before Wednesday noon, if possible. We will send you a summary of the meeting so that we can all keep informed of external communications regarding DAQMS.

Thanks!

Attachment 2

March 12, 1993

MEMO TO: Paulette Middleton, Director

FROM: Henry Lansford, Communication Manager

SUBJECT: Proposed Visibility Impairment Exhibit

Paulette:

I'm writing this memo to summarize the status of an opportunity to communicate information about important air-quality issues to some large and influential audiences that include national and international decision-makers and opinion leaders as well as scientists, educators and the general public.

As you know, we were approached about a month ago by two National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) staff members who manage the center's educational activities, tours and exhibits. They are Rene Munoz, who runs the NCAR education and tour program, and Steve Davis, the exhibit program coordinator. They would like for our team to collaborate with them in developing and producing an exhibit on air quality, with emphasis on how science is serving society in its efforts to deal with this critical environmental issue. NCAR is not deeply involved in air-quality research, and Rene and Steve are aware that it is our primary concern, so they have invited us to participate in develop-ing the scientific, technical and policy-related content of the exhibit.

In our initial discussion with the NCAR people, we suggested that the exhibit focus on visibility impairment, as this aspect of air quality is currently the subject of a great deal of public attention and concern. We also suggested that it cover both urban and rural visibility problems, with an initial focus on the western United States. We proposed that the urban issue be illustrated by Brown Cloud II (the Denver Air Quality Modeling Study) and the rural aspect by the current assessment work on haze in western national parks that is being done under the auspices of the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission and other organizations. Rene and Steve agreed that this seems to be a sound and workable approach.

The air-quality exhibit will be one of several new exhibits that Steve is proposing to NCAR management. He suggested that a prototype, focused on western visibility issues, could be displayed in the NCAR Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, with the possibility of producing expanded versions that would travel to science museums and other locations around the country. Primary funding is expected to come from educational programs of agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency, with in-kind contributions from NCAR primarily in the form of participation by staff members whose salaries are paid from NCAR's regular operating budget. Steve had hoped that ACT would be able to make a similar in-kind contribution on our own, but we explained that we are supported entirely by soft money and that it will be necessary to obtain funding specifically earmarked to cover our salaries, benefits and overhead for any time that we contribute to the project.

This is a highly promising opportunity to communicate information about visibility issues and research to some large and important audiences. Scientists come to NCAR from all over the world to attend international conferences and other meetings at the Mesa Lab, and many national and international political leaders also visit there. For example, Margaret Thatcher came to NCAR for a tour and briefing during her 1990 visit to the United States, and Senator Robert Kerrey was there just a few weeks ago to explore education and technology transfer programs. Last year, the NCAR education and tour program provided formal tours and briefings for more than 6,000 visitors, including students, teachers and other non-scientists with special interests. Several times that number of visitors, perhaps as many as 20,000-30,000 annually, view NCAR exhibits while taking self-guided tours of the Mesa Lab, which is open to the public seven days a week and is a popular stop for tourists and other visitors to Boulder.

Our team would serve as a resource for two aspects of the exhibit content: (1) the current state of scientific understanding of the sources and processes involved in urban and rural visibility impairment in the western United States and (2) how this understanding can be expanded and linked most directly and effectively with air-quality policy-making and regulation. In addition to drawing on our own knowledge and experience, we would use our contacts in the air-quality research and policy communities to utilize other knowledgeable people as information resources.

I believe that the NCAR exhibit is a really valuable opportunity to inform and educate some important audiences about air-quality issues and research, and I suggest that we do our best to develop funding for our participation in the project.

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