ISO 22324
ISO 22324 Societal security — Emergency management — Guidelines for colour-coded alerts is the international standard to provide guidelines for color codes to indicate severity of hazards in public warnings. There are many different systems are already in use, such as colour state of meteorological condition or former Homeland Security Advisory System, and the standard is intended to be an approach to eliminate confusion due to such differences.[1] The present edition ISO 22324:2015[2] is the first ISO standard on the topic, which was developed by ISO/TC 223.
Color codes for severity level
Three basic color codes for severity levels are defined with meaning and proposed action, as in following table.[3]
| Color | Text color | Meaning | Proposed action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | White | Danger | Take appropriate safety action immediately |
| Yellow | Black | Caution | Prepare to take appropriate safety action |
| Green | White | Safe | No action required |
If more than three levels of hazards are needed, the standard recommends use of colors on the spectrum between the red and green. The number of levels should be minimized to avoid confusion, not to exceed seven colors.
Diversity of human limitation of ability to recognize color, including color blindness, should be paid attention when a color code system is brought into operation. The standard recommends to pay special care to provide supporting information, such as:
- text (recommended color is shown in the table), numbers, shape, symbol or size
- audible color name, such as audible "red alert" voice
- positional cues i.e. colors should always be placed in a certain defined order in increasing levels of severity, such as left to right or bottom to top
Color codes for supplementary information
The standard gives additional color codes for supplementary information, defined with meaning and usage limitation, as in following table.[4]
| Color | Text color | Meaning | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | White | Fatal danger | Can be used with red; can be replaced by black-and-white checkerboard pattern |
| Purple | White | Fatal danger | Can be used with red |
| Blue | White | Informational purposes | Should not be used to indicate level of severity |
| Grey | No information available | To indicate no information is available |
Black and purple can be used to indicate special cases of danger i.e. red color code, thus supporting information such as text (recommended color shown in table above) is also recommended.
An example is the sequence black-red-yellow-green, used in triage tag in most part of the world.
Recommended Color Selection
The Annex B (informational) of the standard gives recommended selection of color for above-defined color codes. Each color code has saturated and unsaturated cases, both defined in Munsell, CMYK, and RGB systems.
References
- ↑ Standards New Zealand, 2013: ISO Standards for timely disaster warnings will help save lives, http://www.standards.co.nz/touchstone/consumer-safety/2013/jun/iso-standards-for-timely-disaster-warnings-will-help-save-lives/ accessed 2015-06-21.
- ↑ ISO 22324, Societal security — Emergency management — Guidelines for colour-coded alerts.
- ↑ ISO 22324:2015, Section 4.2.
- ↑ ISO 22324:2015, Section 4.3.
External links
Standards
- Catalogue entry for ISO 22324:2015 (contains link to preview for partial text)