What is crisis communication? Definition, objectives and method

The definition

In Dutch crisis management practice, crisis communication is defined as communicating with the public during an incident, disaster or crisis, connecting with what people need to know so that they can adjust their own behaviour accordingly. That description, as used by the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (Nederlands Instituut Publieke Veiligheid, NIPV), is deliberately broad: it covers both the municipality informing residents about a major fire and the hospital explaining to patients that an IT outage is delaying operations.

Two things stand out about that definition. First, the recipient is central, not the sender: it is about what people need in order to act, not about what the organisation wants to get off its chest. Second, crisis communication is not a standalone discipline but one of the processes within crisis management, alongside population care and information management. That means a communication adviser during a crisis does not simply produce texts, but operates inside a structure with its own roles, powers and meeting rhythms.

Crisis communication versus risk communication

These two are often confused, while the difference matters in practice.

	Risk communication	Crisis communication
When	Before an incident, structurally	During and directly after an incident
Purpose	Make people aware and resilient	Enable people to act, and give meaning
Pace	Campaign-based, months	Minutes to hours
Example	Guidance on what to do in a power outage	A message during an outage about expected restoration time
Room for error	Wide: you can adjust course	Narrow: a correction rarely catches the original

Organisations with risk communication in order have less to explain during the crisis itself. That is the main reason to invest in it beforehand: the first message lands better with people who already know the frame.

The three objectives of crisis communication

Dutch crisis management distinguishes three objectives that run simultaneously. They are not sequential: most messages carry all three.

1. Providing information

Accurate, timely and understandable information about what is happening and which processes are running. This is the factual part: what happened, where, since when, what is the current state, when does the next update come. The hard rule here is that you share only what is verified, and that you say explicitly what you do not yet know. "We are investigating whether personal data has been taken" is usable information; staying silent until you are certain is not.

2. Sensemaking

Giving people an interpretation by placing the event in a wider perspective. This is the part many organisations rush past. Sensemaking answers the question people are actually asking: what does this mean for me, and how bad is this? It acknowledges emotions without talking them away, and it shows the organisation understands what is at stake. This is pre-eminently the part a senior leader must do, and it cannot be delegated.

3. Harm reduction

Alerting people to threat or danger and giving them a concrete course of action. A course of action is a specific, executable instruction: close windows and doors, call this number, avoid this street, change your password. A message without one leaves people alone with their anxiety. In the Netherlands, NL-Alert is the best-known instrument for this purpose, but your own website, social channels and a reachable phone number matter just as much.

Who is responsible for what in the Netherlands

Responsibility follows the line of public authority, not the organisational chart.

Level	Who	For what
Local	The mayor	Informing the population of their own municipality
Regional	The chair of the safety region	Coordination during cross-municipal crises, through the Regional Policy Team
National	The National Crisis Communication Core Team (NKC)	Information hub for central government during national crises
Organisation	The executive board or directors	Communication on behalf of the organisation itself, also when government escalates

Organisations that are not public authorities, such as hospitals, grid operators or companies, run their own communication but must coordinate as soon as government escalates. At that point the municipality or safety region may take the lead on communication to the general population, while you remain responsible for communication to your own patients, customers or staff. It pays to agree in advance who calls whom at that moment.

The models crisis communication rests on

BOB: the Dutch decision model

BOB stands for Beeldvorming, Oordeelsvorming and Besluitvorming: building the picture, forming a judgement, taking a decision. It is the meeting model nearly every Dutch crisis team uses. Building the picture gathers the facts and separates them explicitly from assumptions. Forming a judgement weighs what those facts mean for the objectives and the dilemmas. Taking a decision selects an action and assigns an owner. The strength of BOB lies in the discipline: do not decide before the picture is there, and do not linger in the picture when a decision is due.

GRIP: the escalation structure

GRIP stands for Gecoördineerde Regionale Incidentbestrijdingsprocedure, the coordinated regional incident response procedure. It determines how much coordination an incident requires, from GRIP 1 (source control at the scene) to GRIP 5 (multiple safety regions). For communication professionals, the GRIP level mainly determines pace, authority and who handles media.

CERC: the international framework

The CERC model (Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication) from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets out six principles: be first, be right, be credible, express empathy, promote action and show respect. That order is not accidental. "Be first" leads because the first account sets the frame; if you do not fill it in, someone else will.

SCCT: matching response to crisis type

The Situational Crisis Communication Theory developed by W. Timothy Coombs links the appropriate response strategy to the type of crisis and to how far your organisation is held responsible. Broadly: a crisis in which your organisation is itself the victim, such as an external cyber attack, calls for a different tone than a crisis caused by your own negligence. Organisations that use the first posture for the second situation are rarely rewarded for it.

Where AI changes the work, and where it does not

Artificial intelligence changes the methodology of crisis communication hardly at all. The three objectives stay the same, BOB stays BOB, and the division of responsibility does not shift. What does change is the pace at which the preparatory work is ready.

Element	What AI adds	What stays human work
Situational awareness	Gathering signals faster from social media, news and reports; flagging patterns and contradictions	Judging whether a signal is true and whether it matters
Ordering facts	Building a timeline, separating facts from assumptions in a single overview	Establishing what counts as a fact
First message	A draft within minutes, in several variants	Tone, timing and the decision to publish
Q&As	Generating the predictable questions, including the uncomfortable ones	Deciding which answer you actually give
Translation	Rapid reach in multiple languages	Cultural checking by a speaker of the language
Reporting duties	Flagging which deadlines are running and drafting a notification	The legal assessment and the signature
Decision-making	Laying out options and consequences side by side	The decision itself and accounting for it

The common thread: AI bites mainly on the first phase of BOB and on producing drafts. Judgement and decision-making, where trade-offs and accountability meet, stay with people. That is not caution but a matter of principle: an algorithm cannot be held to account for a decision, a board member can.

The five mistakes made most often

1. Waiting until everything is certain. In the time you take to complete the picture, others fill in the story. Communicate what you do know, and when you will know more.
2. Starting from reputation. A first message written from the question "how do we get out of this" rather than "what do affected people need right now" reads noticeably wrong.
3. Offering no course of action. A message that says only what has gone wrong, and not what people can do, raises anxiety instead of lowering it.
4. Promising an update rhythm and missing it. "More information at 4pm" is a commitment. No news is also news: say that there is nothing new.
5. Letting internal and external drift apart. Staff who learn from the news what is going on become a second communication channel, and not the one you want.

How to prepare

A crisis communication plan need not be a tome. The minimum it should contain:

• Who sits in the crisis team, who is the spokesperson, and who covers them outside office hours.
• Which scenarios are realistic for your organisation, and per scenario the first three actions.
• Which channels you use, who can access them, and whether they work if your own IT is down.
• Which reporting duties could be triggered, to which authority, and within what deadline.
• Which AI tools are permitted, which data may and may not go into them, and who does the final check.
• When you exercise. A plan that has never been tested is an assumption.

That last point is the most important. Almost every organisation that has been through a real crisis says afterwards that the exercise made the difference, not the document.

Sources

• Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIPV), Crisis communication within crisis management — definition, the three objectives and the division between local, regional and national level. Accessed 22 September 2026.
• Dutch Safety Regions Act (Wet veiligheidsregio's) on wetten.overheid.nl — duties of the mayor and the chair of the safety region, and the obligation to maintain a regional crisis plan. Version in force from 12 June 2026.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) — the six principles.
• W. Timothy Coombs, Situational Crisis Communication Theory — linking crisis type to response strategy.
• Dutch National Cyber Security Centre, reporting duties under the Cybersecurity Act — notification deadlines. Accessed 22 September 2026.