Reference
The Archive by Event Class
The 5,270 cases in this edition, mapped against the event classes published in the Warning Lexicon, warning science’s framework for what alert messages should say. Four of the groups below carry the lexicon’s own class names. The other two are this archive’s honesty buckets: the campus alert genres the lexicon does not cover, shown for what they are instead of forced into a hazard class. Every incident type’s assignment is visible on this page, and every chip opens the matching cases in search.
The four class names come from the Warning Lexicon’s published scope, content spanning atmospheric, technological, biological, and human-induced events
. The assignment of this archive’s incident types into those classes is this project’s own editorial mapping, made independently of Dr. Sutton and her research group; the lexicon’s own per-hazard assignments live in its supplemental materials and are not reproduced here. Counts describe this collection, which is a documentation record, not a census of campus alerting.
Sutton, J., Olson, M. K., & Waugh, N. A. (2024). “The Warning Lexicon: A Multiphased Study to Identify, Design, and Develop Content for Warning Messages.” Natural Hazards Review, 25(1). doi:10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-1900 · How the archive’s own chapters relate to these classes
Warning Lexicon event class
Atmospheric events
1,399 cases in this edition
Weather in every form the archive holds: tornadoes, hurricanes, winter storms, flooding, extreme heat, and the smoke advisories that follow wildfires. We also file the earthquakes and the wildfires themselves here, the same reading-convenience call the Severe Weather chapter makes; the lexicon's own assignment of those hazards is in its supplemental materials, which this site does not reproduce.
Warning Lexicon event class
Technological events
452 cases in this edition
The built environment failing: gas leaks, chemical spills, fires, utility and infrastructure outages, contaminated water, transit disruptions, and the newer failures (IT outages, cyberattacks) that now trigger campus notifications. Water contamination and structure fires are filed here rather than with biological or human-induced events, matching how the archive's chapters read them.
- Fire 97
- Hazardous materials incident 78
- Infrastructure failure 63
- Gas leak 59
- Infrastructure failure 34
- Utility failure 29
- Power outage 29
- Transportation disruption 19
- Utility outage 8
- Facility emergency 8
- Water contamination 7
- Hazardous condition 6
- Facility emergency 3
- Hazardous materials incident 3
- Communications outage 2
- Chemical spill 2
- Traffic emergency 1
- Cybersecurity incident 1
- IT systems outage 1
- Explosion 1
- Fire alarm 1
Warning Lexicon event class
Biological events
76 cases in this edition
Disease and other living hazards: outbreaks, public-health advisories, the COVID-19 operational record, and the occasional animal on campus that prompts an avoid-the-area notice. Animal hazards are our call, not the lexicon's; they sit here because the hazard is biological even when the message reads like a weather advisory.
Warning Lexicon event class
Human-induced events
1,182 cases in this edition
People as the hazard, in the imminent-threat register the lexicon was built for: active shooters, armed-person reports, bomb threats and swatting, civil unrest, and the lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and evacuations those events trigger. The protective-action activations (lockdown, shelter-in-place, evacuation, police activity) are filed here as our judgment call: in this archive they overwhelmingly document human threats.
- Shooting 277
- Police activity 147
- Report of shots fired 127
- Bomb threat 126
- Armed person report 85
- Swatting incident 76
- Active threat report 72
- Threat of violence 71
- Civil unrest 56
- Active shooter report 32
- Shelter-in-place 23
- Suspicious activity report 19
- Suspicious package 17
- Threat report 14
- Lockdown 12
- False alarm 11
- False report 4
- Evacuation 3
- Workplace violence incident 3
- Suspicious person report 2
- Weapon scare 2
- Weapon report 2
- Weapon report 1
This archive's bucket
Campus-native genres
1,674 cases in this edition
Everything the WEA-derived lexicon does not cover, and the largest part of what campuses actually send: report-driven Clery Act timely warnings (assaults, robberies, burglaries, thefts, and the rest of the crime-notice genre), HEOA missing-person notifications, and operational notices. These are defined by their message genre and their statutes, not by hazard physics, so forcing them into a hazard class would misdescribe them. Arson sits here with the rest of the property-crime genre even though a fire is physical: its alerts are report-driven crime notices.
- Robbery 566
- Burglary 300
- Sexual assault report 234
- Assault 145
- Theft 116
- Aggravated assault 74
- Motor vehicle theft 64
- Stabbing 31
- Sexual offense report 30
- Stalking report 18
- Missing person 17
- Arson 13
- Hate crime report 13
- Domestic violence incident 8
- Scam advisory 7
- Homicide 7
- Carjacking 6
- Crime advisory 5
- All-clear notice 3
- Bias incident report 3
- Fraud advisory 3
- Campus closure 2
- Dating violence incident 2
- Arrest on campus 1
- Crime pattern advisory 1
- Death on campus 1
- Trespassing incident 1
- Home invasion 1
- Indecent exposure report 1
- Vandalism 1
This archive's bucket
Not classifiable by incident type
487 cases in this edition
Cases whose incident type says nothing about the event: the generic “other” plus scheduled system tests and drills. Filing these into a hazard class would be a guess, so they are listed here instead.
Where to go from here
The archive’s own reading paths are the eight chapters, which group these same cases by incident genre with authored narratives. For the science this page aligns to, Dr. Sutton’s research program and practitioner resources are introduced on the Message Anatomy page; FEMA’s IPAWS Message Design Dashboard implements the Warning Lexicon for alert originators.
Back to the chapters