15 skills every risk, crisis and emergency communicator needs by 2027

A practitioner's answer to Forbes Communications Council's 2027 list, written for the people who communicate when something is going wrong.

Hackers heated French fridges. Who spoke first?

Three days, one campaign and no single voice. What the communication looked like, and the wording you can adapt.

The Global Outlook has its first numbers, and there is still time to take part

Irkutsk, a pending lab result and six rumours in a week.

Government communicators fight for precision, corporate communicators for restraint, and Irkutsk tests both.

Your next crisis focus group might not contain any humans.

Synthetic audiences can test messages in days, in private, at scale. What they can safely do for risk, crisis and emergency communicators is narrower than the demos suggest.

The UN just mapped the global risk network. Disinformation sits at the centre of it.

The 2026 Global Risk Report separates what institutions can see from what they can act on and that gap is where practitioners now sit.

The AI threat is already documented. Is your crisis plan?

What 154 pages of AI misuse case studies mean for how you do your job

The September reset every crisis team skips.

A readiness checklist for the six weeks between summer and Q4 risk season.

41 minutes: why an alert system is not an early-warning system.

A Reuters investigation into the Nepal-Tibet flood shows why faster messaging can't fix a broken information supply chain.

86% see the risk. 14% train for it.

Deloitte's new Corporate Affairs report ranks crisis and geopolitical training dead last on the 2026 investment list — while calling geopolitics a 'standing condition.'

AI's Explanation Problem: Why 833 Opposition Groups Matter

833 opposition groups is not a messaging failure. It is what happens when an industry cannot explain itself and will not own the consequences.

Anticipator, enabler, or observer: which one is your crisis team, really?

A five-role maturity model, built for investors and innovators, doubles as an uncomfortably accurate test of crisis readiness.

AI didn't invent a new crisis. It just broke the clock.

ICM tracked a record year of US crisis coverage. International SOS surveyed 250 risk leaders across 53 countries. They're describing the same problem.

Gray zone attacks: the crisis your comms plan was never built for.

A guide to the ambiguous, deniable attacks now hitting critical infrastructure, contractors and private citizens worldwide — and what that means for your comms plan.

When AI hacks AI: inside the disclosure that turned a breach into a safety story

A case study in attribution timing, third-party validation, and the vocabulary gap crisis teams don't have yet for agentic AI incidents.

The best crisis guidance in existence can't actually certify you.

A clause-by-clause reading of ISO 22361, 22301 and 31000 finds the standard with the deepest crisis communication guidance is also the one nobody can be audited against — and none of the three has a plan for infodemics or AI.

Overturn This: what FIFA's Balogun mess teaches communicators.

A reversed red card, a presidential phone call, and Iran's viral Lego propaganda are all running the same geopolitical script—and every one of them is a lesson for anyone managing a technical or disciplinary process.

Three ways AI starts a crisis — and only one of them involves AI failing

IBM's Calculus of AI Sovereignty study puts numbers on a crisis type your response plans probably don't cover.

Polycrisis – You can't stop the shock. You can stop the spread.

What power-grid engineers know about containing a crisis before it spreads.

22 crisis case studies, three frameworks, one wiki

I built a public wiki for crisis communication. Here's why, and how you can add to it.

The wall that runs your crisis response when no one else can.

How a Japanese city replaced a 100-page manual with 27 cards — and what I built next.

The SAFE AI framework

Your AI system fails tomorrow. What do you say? The humanitarian sector just published the governance framework the private sector should have built first.

The risks hurting organisations most aren't on their risk registers.

What 12 global risk reports actually found and what it means for crisis communicators.

EU compliance is now inside your crisis plan. Here's where.

AI labelling obligations, 24-hour incident windows, four-hour notifications – and the one exemption most practitioners miss.

The drone communication plan you don't have.

The first-hour problem no drone incident plan prepares you for.