Reference
The Archive by Event Class
The 7,445 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
2,784 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
797 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 144
- Power outage 119
- Infrastructure failure 99
- Gas leak 93
- Hazardous materials incident 90
- Utility failure 73
- Infrastructure failure 62
- Transportation disruption 19
- Water contamination 15
- Utility outage 13
- Facility emergency 11
- Facility emergency 8
- Hazardous condition 8
- Utility disruption 6
- Road hazard 5
- IT systems outage 5
- Hazardous materials incident 4
- IT systems outage 4
- Explosion 3
- Water outage 3
- Communications outage 3
- Cybersecurity incident 3
- Chemical spill 3
- Traffic emergency 2
- Facility hazard 1
- Fire alarm 1
Warning Lexicon event class
Biological events
74 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
1,317 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 299
- Police activity 199
- Report of shots fired 152
- Bomb threat 136
- Armed person report 99
- Active threat report 71
- Threat of violence 70
- Swatting incident 70
- Civil unrest 52
- Active shooter report 28
- Shelter-in-place 22
- Suspicious activity report 22
- Suspicious package 20
- Lockdown 17
- Threat report 15
- False alarm 12
- Nearby threat 8
- Weapon report 5
- Evacuation 4
- False report 4
- Suspicious person report 3
- Workplace violence incident 3
- Weapon report 2
- Weapon scare 2
- Armed subject report 1
- Nearby police activity 1
This archive's bucket
Campus-native genres
1,950 cases in this edition
Everything the WEA-derived lexicon does not cover, and a large share 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 570
- Burglary 389
- Sexual assault report 262
- Assault 175
- Theft 153
- Motor vehicle theft 89
- Aggravated assault 77
- Sexual offense report 47
- Stabbing 28
- Stalking report 26
- Arson 20
- Missing person 18
- Hate crime report 17
- Scam advisory 10
- Domestic violence incident 8
- Homicide 6
- Fondling report 6
- Carjacking 6
- Campus closure 5
- Vandalism 5
- Fraud advisory 5
- Crime advisory 5
- Operational notice 3
- All-clear notice 3
- Indecent exposure report 3
- Dating violence incident 3
- Bias incident report 3
- Trespassing incident 2
- Extortion report 1
- Harassment report 1
- Arrest on campus 1
- Crime pattern advisory 1
- Death on campus 1
- Home invasion 1
This archive's bucket
Not classifiable by incident type
523 cases in this edition
Cases whose incident type says nothing about the event: the generic “other” and “emergency” labels 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