Project HEROIC–which stands for Hazards, Emergency Response, and Online Informal Communications (see footnote)–took a close look at the online activity of official organizations during the recent domestic terrorist event in Boston and the ensuing suspect chase–that seemed like a marathon in itself.  They released a report today (May 10) titled “Following the Bombing” which I have summarize below.

Their Methodology and Findings

In order to understand  what types of information was provided to the public and how broadly it was distributed, the project team reviewed 29 different government agency or related Twitter accounts. The first question might be: why only Twitter? Researchers like Twitter–the data is easy to grab and analyze.

The project team reviewed two main items: 1. Rate of posting by the selected organizations and elected officials;  and 2. The percent change in followers  (spoiler alert: Boston PD had a 500% increase and the Boston PD PIO Cheryl Fiandaca had a 2291% increase).  The rate that these organizations posted was tied to their increase in followers, which is no surprise, however, there was a notable exception–Boston Fire Department.

Boston FD gained a 25% increase in followers without posting once the day of the attack. Their absence  was not lost on the Twittersphere, and the Boston FD even felt it necessary to defend their decision the next day.  They Tweeted that they deliberately did not post any Tweets from the scene because it is their policy not to “…show any injured person or discuss our treatment.” Quite a few people, however, thought their decision was unfortunate; at a minimum they could have simply ReTweeted the Boston PD account. As the researchers pointed out:  ”…organizations that have increased their network size must provide information of value and to be aware that the public is watching.” Honestly, its about trust. People who follow official accounts do so because they know they can trust the content. The public followers also have a notion that they will provided information in timely manner-especially during incidents such as this one where everyone was looking for any tidbit  they could find in order to make sense out of the chaos.  It is not a stretch to see why people were upset.

Read the whole report here. I like some of their questions they pose at the end:  What can organizations do to ensure their newfound followers stick around? and What educational preparedness-type information should organizations provide to take advantage of the narrow window of attention they have? Let me know your thoughts.

Footnote: “Project HEROIC is a collaborative, NSF funded effort by researchers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the University of California-Irvine to better understand the dynamics of informal online communication in response to extreme events. Through a combination of data collection and modeling of conversation dynamics, the project team aims to understand the relationship between hazard events, informal communication and emergency response.” (via: http://heroicproject.org/)

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Academics from IBM Research Labs in India; Indraprastha Institute for Information Technology, Delhi, India; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore  County collaborated on an article titled: “Faking Sandy: Characterizing and Identifying Fake Images on Twitter during Hurricane Sandy.” This article is interesting in light of the events in Boston and the debate about the veracity of content on social media. Although there hasn’t been time to do complete quantitative data analyses of the Marathon bombing social media feeds, this research adds to the increasing collection of academic studies that can help us better understand how misinformation is distributed on social platforms, specifically Twitter, and how  it can be easily and quickly identified as false.

Abstract:

In today’s world, online social media plays a vital role during real world events, especially crisis events. There are both positive and negative effects of social media coverage of events, it can be used by authorities for effective disaster management or by malicious entities to spread rumors and fake news.

The aim of this paper, is to highlight the role of Twitter, during Hurricane Sandy (2012) to spread fake images about the disaster. We identified 10,350 unique tweets containing fake images that were circulated on Twitter, during Hurricane Sandy. We performed a characterization analysis, to understand the temporal, social reputation and influence patterns for the spread of fake images. Eighty-six percent of tweets spreading the fake images were retweets, hence very few were original tweets. Our results showed that top thirty users out of 10,215 users (0.3%) resulted in 90% of the retweets of fake images; also network links such as follower relationships of Twitter, contributed very less (only 11%) to the spread of these fake photos URLs. Next, we used classification models, to distinguish fake images from real images of Hurricane Sandy. Best results were obtained from Decision Tree classifier, we got 97% accuracy in predicting fake images from real. Also, tweet based features were very effective in distinguishing fake images tweets from real, while the performance of user based features was very poor. Our results, showed that, automated techniques can be used in identifying real images from fake images posted on Twitter.

The last sentence is the most important: “Our results, showed that, automated techniques can be used in identifying real images from fake images posted on Twitter.” Hopefully, those automated approaches will be available to use quickly and intuitively without needing to know how to write an algorithm on the fly. There are people working with that goal in mind. See this great post “Automatically Extracting Disaster-Relevant Information from Social Media” by Patrick Meier–where he describes his efforts  ”to develop open source and freely available next generation humanitarian technologies to better manage Big (Crisis) Data.” A software solution is on the horizon.

Why do people post false information? That interesting psychological question was not addressed in this study. Maybe people think an image of a shark swimming the street is funny; maybe they are out for a minute or more of fame.  I, for one, am increasingly leery to ReTweet any photo when an event is unfolding unless I see it on several sources (e.g. on Twitter and also streamed live from a “traditional” local news station). Tell me, how comfortable do you have to be with a source before you hit “ReTweet?”

Thank you @janehenrici for the title! I had posted “Are those photos for real?” I hear the phrase “Is that for real”  in my house full of teenagers and was just trying to be “witty.” I like Jane’s title much better though. Let’s call this crowdsourced blogging!

Related articles

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Even though the Boston Marathon 2013 bombing event happened less than 24 hours ago at the time of writing, there are already numerous accounts of the role social media played during the horrific aftermath. Here are four great articles:

• “Social Media Shapes Boston Bombing Response” by Dan Gilgoff and Jane J. Lee of National Geographic News.
• “Social Media and the Boston Marathon Bombings” by Timo Luge
• “Social Media, a Blessing and a Curse…the Boston Marathon aftermath” by Patrice Cloutier and
• “Self-Organizated Crisis Response to #BostonMarathon Attack” by Patrick Meier.

In an effort not to repeat the good work done by these individuals,  I would like to focus on the use of social networks, particularly Twitter, by the Boston Police Department. I have three main observations, however, I’m sure there are many lessons that can, and most likely will, be teased out of this event.

1. Valuable time does not have to be spent word-smithing updates to social networks; it is more important to get the message out the door as quickly as possible and to make sure your point is clearly understood.

22 injured. 2 dead #tweetfromthebeat via @CherylFiandaca—
Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

This specific Tweet was ReTweeted (or repeated) almost 8,000 times. Providing straightforward information is especially important if your organization is countering misinformation such as this:

UPDATE: Reports of at least 12 dead, dozens more injured in Boston Marathon explosions nyp.st/ZlWY9t—
New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2013

This NY Post update was regarded quite skeptically by the public as evidenced by the number of times is was repeated, only 1,700. Although that seems like a large amount, the difference in the number of ReTweets between this update and the Tweet from BPD is telling: people were leery of the information. In fact, many people challenged the Post by directing messages to them questioning the content. After it was determined that the information was false, some urged them to issue a retraction.

@RumorsandRants @nypost Weird…nowhere in the story from that link does it say 12 dead.—
Josh Weinfuss (@joshweinfuss) April 15, 2013

2. In a fast moving situation, it isn’t that difficult to understand how incomplete or incorrect content can get posted. However, if that does happen,  it may be necessary to repeat the correction.

A third incident at JFK library. Not certain related- but BPD treating like they are #tweetfromthebeat via @CherylFiandaca—
Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

This content was picked up by news organizations, such as Reuters, and the “not certain” was scrubbed out in the process. The Reuters post was ReTweeted by 8,000 of their followers. It was also repeated on broadcast television stations as well.

Boston police confirms another explosion at JFK Library #breaking—
Reuters US News (@ReutersUS) April 15, 2013

Boston PD corrected the information in two Tweets:

Update JFK incident appears to be fire related #tweetfromthebeat via @CherylFiandaca—
Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

Commissioner Davis, “The preliminary investigation indicates JFK incident may not have been an explosion. It may have been a fire."—
Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

3. Situational awareness information can often be found from the social accounts of other city agencies or organizations.

Fire in building is out, appears to have started in the mechanical room of new building. All staff and visitors are accounted for and safe.—
JFK Library (@JFKLibrary) April 15, 2013

Interestingly, the JFK Library posted the all-clear status of the building, but BPD still repeated the possibility of a third incident at the library a full thirty minutes later. However, although thirty minutes seems like a long time during the height of an incident response, in the larger scheme of things, they corrected the information very quickly.

I’m sure in the coming weeks the #SMEM community will find even more lessons and observations, I look forward to learning more about how information was provided to the public and how social networks were monitored during the event. Let me know your thoughts.

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I recently saw a presentation about GeoFeedia,  a social media monitoring software system, at an SMEM-type event sponsored by the Metropolitan College of NY’s Emergency and Disaster Management MPA program. Their presentation, along with the ensuing conversation, inspired me to take a closer look.  GeoFeedia’s monitoring tool is unique among all of its competitors: it allows the user to include location searches for content versus only searching by keyword. Timo Luge’s blog post about the service describes why this feature is so important:

If someone uploads and photo a writes “Here is a photo of my house after the #earthquake in #Alphaville” it’ll be easy to find, but if someone simply writes “My house – so sad!“ you won’t find it using standard tools. And while you can use services like Hootsuite to show you all tweets in certain area, doing this is quite tricky and too complicated for most users.

Watch their video for a great one-minute description.

I encourage you to explore their website for details about what the tool can do, but below I briefly describe its 6 main features, including location monitoring:

1. It enables “advanced location monitoring” which will gather–as well as archive—social communications based on the location determined by the user. For instance, if there was an explosion in an area, law enforcement could hone in on people posting about the incident who are in close proximity.  In contrast, if only a keyword search were used, then the collected content would include everyone discussing the event.
2.  Keyword searches are not eliminated from GeoFeedia. The ability to filter social content and refine searches using keywords as well as timeframe, media type, author “and more” is included.
3. Data is exportable in a feature they call “data portability.”
4. Content from GeoFeedia can easily be published to your own social networks.
5. Analytical tools are embedded that can help the user identify such things as the most active or influential poster, as well as trends, etc.
6. The content of the geo-feed is shareable to people “inside or outside your organization. You can even share a live Geofeed stream with users that don’t have a Geofeedia account.” In contrast, other software tools, including Radian 6, have very restrictive sharing policies and explicitly do NOT allow sharing of content with non-account holders.

Do Geo-location Tools Invade Privacy?

Following their presentation in New York,  the question of privacy was raised, which I thought was interesting.  Do people expect some privacy when posting content to social networks?  If you are quick to answer “no” then consider this statement by one of the participants: “Ask any teenager if posting to Twitter and Instagram allows everyone to see their content and they will answer ‘yes.’ Then ask them if they would be OK with their parents viewing whatever they are posting and they will emphatically answer ‘NO!’” I know this to be a fact since I happen to live with two teenagers.  

Nonetheless, during a crisis situation it would seem that folks would desire government officials to see their posts in order to receive assistance. But in the world of law enforcement, this type of monitoring tool takes on an entirely different connotation. I can image that a law enforcement agency could use GeoFeedia, or something like it, to draw a virtual circle around a park where a festival is happening and look for information about illegal activity. Would people posting images and Tweeting at the event, for instance, realize they were being “watched” virtually? 

 Based on current law, it seems that these types of searches are legal and possibly even expected by citizens.  Law professor Jonathon Turely wrote a couple of years ago about our evolving societal privacy expectations in a Washington Post article about the then upcoming Supreme Court case Jones v. United States. The case involved a conviction of man based on his activities that were tracked with a GPS devise:

“This surveillance continued after a warrant had expired. But the Obama administration insists that no warrant should be required for the government to track the movements of citizens with such devices. The administration says that the new technology merely captures what can be observed, albeit in far greater detail. But the technology could allow the government to follow an almost limitless number of citizens in real time, all the time.” 

Professor Turely asks:  ”As we come to expect less privacy, are we entitled to less of it?” The court did eventually hold that “the Government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’” under the Fourth Amendment.” However, the broader privacy issue was left unsettled.

How does that case relate to social media? Stephen E. Henderson’s in his journal article Expectations of Privacy in Social Media,  cites the Jones case and many others in his argument that the public really can’t expect privacy when posting publicly on social networks, however, they probably can expect privacy when an effort is made to keep the communication out of the public view, for instance with  protected Tweets and Facebook messages. The notion of control of the information is the key. “If the government  obtains information that was previously in one’s exclusive control, then it has violated the person’s rights.” However, if the information is publicly available, then there is no interference with a “possessory interest.”  This passage sums up his argument:

Whatever the precise definitions of search and seizure, the Court has articulated this general principle:

[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.

This limitation makes eminent sense, in that police should not have to be the only ones to avert their eyes. If you tape a message on a window visible from the street, or place a pie to cool or a plant to grow there, a police officer driving or walking by is free to give it a look. According to the control theory of information privacy, you have chosen to share that information. Whereas if you carry any of those items on your person in public, but in an opaque container, the item remains private, and police must act accordingly.

Some social media is exposed to the public, such as an open-to-the world blog. It is not reasonable to expect privacy when one publishes something to all comers. So there would be no Fourth Amendment restraint on police obtaining the content of such a blog, either by bringing up the site themselves or via the third party hosting that content. The same holds true for a Facebook wall which the user leaves open to the public, YouTube videos left open to the public, and flickr pictures left open to the public. And the same holds true for tweets from a public account, meaning one for which the user does not restrict followers. Since any private person can obtain these things without restraint, the police can as well. (page 238)

Do you have an expectation of privacy? Does your law enforcement agency worry about this topic?  My treatment of this issue is admittedly very superficial–there are many different facets to explore. For a much lengthier treatment of the topic, I encourage you to read Mr. Henderson’s entire article, you can also see sites such as the  Electronic Privacy Information Center.

For another review and more information about GeoFeedia find a comprehensive post by Patrick Meier on iRevolution here. Despite the debate over privacy, I think GeoFeedia is a great tool and probably represents the future of how emergency response organizations will monitor social content in order to gain the best situational awareness. Let me know what you think.

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• A lesson from Superstorm Sandy: How to find sources using social media (onlinejournalismblog.com)

Maryland Emergency Management Agency (Photo credit: Maryland National Guard)

The Maryland Emergency Management Agency (@MDMEMA on Twitter)  has recently taken their social media communication’s strategy to new heights–even incorporating a module about the tools into their Public Information Officer training.

I had the opportunity to meet the MEMA  Social Media Coordinator, Kasey Parr, when we both served on a panel at the Social Media Week in Washington DC (a big thank you to Michael Clarke of International Media Solutions for organizing our session). I  asked Kasey in a written follow up for a little more detail about their social media plans and current processes. Below is the result of the Q&A with both Kasey and Ed McDonough,  the MEMA PIO.

Q1. What type of Social Media content is included in the PIO training?

A1: Kasey: The first training we conducted on “Social Media in the JIC” was right before Hurricane Sandy, forcing me to cut down on my slides because of time constraints on Ed and myself. The presentation given before Hurricane Sandy included:

• Why do we use social media during emergencies?
• What are the benefits?- This will now include a case study of the Derecho/Hurricane Sandy
• Our level of engagement/How we use SM
• VOST concept and how we can create a model with MD social media managers
• Procedures during an event- 12 hour shift roles and responsibilities
• Monitoring/responding (what it is, how we do it, etc)-

A1: Ed — I would add that we have been teaching about the use of social media as part of our instruction of FEMA‘s Basic PIO (G290) and JIC/JIS (G291) training for several years. We discuss the various platforms for SM, how to get buy in from supervisors and/or elected officials, stress the differences and similarities between SM and the traditional media, and emphasize that it is a two-way information flow that also can help operations folks with tactical decisions.  (You may be familiar with some of the ways Bill Humphries of LAFD has used Twitter to gain operational information.)

Maryland Emergency Management Agency (Photo credit: Maryland National Guard)

Q2. How is SM incorporated into “normal” communications and messaging processes?
A2: Ed — During our “sunny day” periods, we regularly use social media to engage the public about preparedness information, regularly monitor Facebook and twitter for information about weather, traffic and other information in and around Maryland and from emergency management agencies around the country. Unlike traditional media, where we are usually just pushing out information, we use social media to actually engage the public with contests and such to get immediate feedback. We also are in the process of making sure that our social media policies are incorporated into our public information SOPs, so any state public information officer working in our Joint Information Center will understand the role of social media in emergency management.

Q3.  Do you talk (in your training) specifically about the transfer of the intelligence gathered from monitoring social networks to decision-makers? 
A3: Kasey–We do address social media monitoring in our training. As a part of the procedures in the JIC the roles and responsibilities of the monitor are outlined. These responsibilities include alerting the team of any relevant trends that may need to be addressed and by whom these issues need to be addressed according to the urgency of the matter. Some issues can be easily solved with the PIO, relevant state agency reps, or they [may] require the attention of the Senior Policy Group.

Depending on the nature of the information that has come through, we may need to get the Governor to address it in his next press briefing, have the PIO construct a press release, or create a social media messaging strategy centered on the intelligence or trend to eliminate confusion. After Hurricane Sandy, we walked away with a lot of lessons learned as far as media monitoring is concerned. In my opinion, the social media monitor has the most important role during a disaster. This is one part of our social media program that I would like to build out for a disaster or emergency situation.

A3: Ed — I would add that we are exploring the use of crowdsourcing programs that could work in conjunction with our GIS staff to give operational staff in the state EOC better situational awareness during an activation. This will become even more important for counties and cities, as they are on the front lines of response.

Thank you so much Ed and Kasey! Let me know what types of questions you might have for them or other agencies.

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Mary Jo Flynn, the Assistant Director of the Emergency Management Division in Anaheim California, consistently surprises me with her creative use of social media and new technologies to engage CERT members. For instance, just a couple of months ago she Tweeted about how she integrated the use of QR codes into a CERT exercise.

Conduct a CERT exercise using QR codes posted around a facility. Dubbed a "choose your own adventur pinterest.com/pin/6628742573…—
Anaheim CERT (@AnaheimCERT) May 09, 2012

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The blizzard of 2013 is still causing problems from New Jersey to Maine at the time of writing. Although recovery from the storm is far from over, I’d like to look at Massachusetts specifically and make some observations about the role social media and web-based communications played (and continues to play) during this event.

1. Public organizations, as well as elected officials, provided great service announcements to encourage people to help one another. My favorite was a Tweet from the Mayor of Boston asking people to be a snow angel, not just make one.

Don't just make a snow angel on your snow day- be one! Help elderly & disabled neighbors. #BOSnowAngel ow.ly/i/1ve5J #bosnow #bps—
Mayor Tom Menino (@mayortommenino) February 11, 2013

They even took it  a step further by asking “How are you being a Snow Angel today? Use#BOSnowAngel to share a photo of your good deed.”

2. Sometimes the message was simple: “I don’t know.”  This post on Facebook was from Mass 2-1-1 who defines themselves as “an easy to remember, toll-free telephone number that connects callers to information about critical health and human services available in their community, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

One thing Mass 2-1-1 might have done is linked to the private utility company’s Facebook page, which brings me to #3.

3. Utility companies definitely bear the brunt of much of the public’s ire in the aftermath of disaster events, and this one is proving to be no exception.  This storm also provides an age-old lesson in how to handle some of that anger: no comment. One look at the Nstar’s page will give you an idea of some of the vitriol that can be spewed when the power is out, even for a day or two.  This simple statement on their page elicited over 200 responses, quite a lot of them angry.

“We expect to have all customers restored by Thursday night and will have community by community restoration times available tomorrow. Our crews will continue to work around the clock until all affected customers are restored. Please stay away from downed power lines and assume all lines are live. Thanks for your patience as we repair the damage from this devastating blizzard“

Although this post seems innocuous, people felt that the restoration rate was way too slow. One person started a fire storm by stating the following:

“I just observed TWENTY SEVEN trucks parked at Dunkin donuts in Falmouth. I have an infant and no power for 48 hours with no end in sight. Some sort of estimate would be extremely appreciated. I am a healthcare worker that’s been working for 30 of the past 48 hours I’m cold, hungry and cranky. My patience is wearing very thin…”

I think they handled it well, however, by letting the public defend them versus jumping into the argument. Often it is a worker’s family member that is the most animated with statements along the lines of “Hey–they are working hard, I haven’t seen my husband in three days!” An example of someone coming to their defense is provided below. This somewhat inelegant statement both defends the company but also points out what everyone would like…more information.

4. If you build it, they will come…and maybe crash your site. The International Business Times reported before the storm that Boston was promoting their snowplow tracking website called SnowOps Viewer that would allow citizens to track snow removal by location by zooming in on the map as well as by inputting an address. This is possible because all city plows are equipped with GPS devices.  Other major cities including New York  (PlowNYC) and Washington DC have similar systems. The problem, however, was that so many people went to the site it crashed under the weight. This is the message even today, Feb. 11: We are experiencing significant traffic and the site is currently unavailable. We are working to resolve these issues. Please check back later. Thank you for your patience. 

Every disaster seems to teach us that sending large amounts of people to your website is not a great idea, unless you have done significant load testing beforehand. I hope they sort out what went wrong soon!

5. Boston has operationalized Twitter. Twitter, unlike their snowplow website, remains up with no problem and Bostonians have been encouraged to send a Tweet to @NotifyBoston to report problems such as unshoveled sidewalks or disabled vehicles. One look at the exchanges taking place there shows that it is obvious the city is taking the citizen-reported information very seriously and wants to hear about problems (see an example below). The @NotifyBoston feed also includes information for citizens as well, including advisories, closures, and storm updates.  (I wonder if or how Mass 2-1-1 and @NotifyBoston are coordinating their efforts and sharing information? That will be a question for future posts.)

Please send us your plow requests, or report here. We'll get there. cityofboston.gov RT Is your st still unplowed in #Boston @PeterWBZ—
City of Boston (@NotifyBoston) February 11, 2013

What are your observations, let me know.

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Getting the public to pay attention to emergency preparedness information can be a challenge. Research in this area tells us that “community-based participatory approaches to designing and disseminating risk communication for at-risk populations, and offering messages in multiple modes that are locally and personally relevant, would have many benefits for strengthen emergency preparedness, response, and recovery for at-risk populations, but are currently underutilized.” Meredith, et al (2008).   Although social media has helped provide a participatory multi-modal approach, there are still many improvements that could be made.

San Francisco, with leadership from Alicia Johnson (@UrbanAreaAlicia) the city’s Resilience and Recovery Manager, is making huge leaps in providing personally relevant preparedness information with the revamp of their 72 Hours preparedness site SF72 or San Francisco 72 Hours. I should note that Alicia emphasized that the site is a team effort and includes the design and innovation consulting firm Ideo, @ideo; Rob Dudgeon, the Director of SF Emergency Services or @sfDEMrob; and Kristin Hogan or @kristinlhogan.

I spoke with an Alicia about the goals and direction this site will be taking. She stated that SF72 concept came from the realization that our current preparepdness messaging is not working.

“So much of what we do is based on individuals preparedness. But research from recent disasters has shown us that people prepare and respond as communities. You never recover from a disaster as an individual, you recover as a community.”

The new site is not quite finished at the time of writing. Once it is done and vetted with SF stakeholders, including the public, the plan is to replace the existing 72Hours.org,

3 Common Preparedness Messaging Mistakes This Type of Site Can Address

1.  Too much information in a non-visual format. We live in an era of video and image communication, yet we continue to provide the public information in a heavy-text format. Public safety organizations are not alone in committing this error. For instance, my high school junior literally tosses college information mailers in the trash if they only include a letter and few, if any, pictures. Mailers that do have a lot of images, however, get placed on her bulletin board.  In terms of public safety,  I commend the new wave of  preparedness apps coming out of emergency management offices, however, quite a few of them look like the screen shot above. And although all of the information is complete, I have to wonder why the content wasn’t made more accessible, with icons or pictures for instance, especially since this particular page is tailored for people with special needs.

2. Not enough interactive content.  Providing a laundry list of protective action measures is not necessarily the best method to communicate this information.  More than likely it is not even read (see #1).  Even though a list may provide all of the correct content, active learning is way more fun, meaning it holds people’s attention. This increases the chance that the material is retained. The SF72 site embraces this active model, which is evident in the “Quake Quiz,” an interactive quiz that is not only very visual but interesting enough to hold the attention of kids and adults alike. Other apps, such as the game associated with the Disaster Preppers TV show, also provides an example of how preparedness content doesn’t have to be dry, but can actually be entertaining as well.

3. No (or not enough) emphasis on sharing. As the general public moves more and more towards openness this sometimes causes uneasiness in government sectors: sharing isn’t caring… it as a violation of the personal privacy protection act. However, asking people to share with their social networks how they are  preparing  is a great idea/best practice. Why? We know people will often respond more positively when asked to do something by a friend versus a government agency. (See the CDC’s 2012 Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Manual.)

Providing the opportunity for sharing is one thing that the SF72 site also does well. People are asked, for instance, to share that they took the quake quiz and even have access to a bit of code in order to place a banner on any website or blog (which is how I included the image above).  They also intend to include videos of people talking about their experiences during large and small disaster (e.g. a house fire) and how they were prepared, or what they would have done differently. This statement on the site demonstrates their desire to embrace the concept of community.

I’m looking forward to seeing the entire site completed.  Alicia also told me that once it is finished, it will be available to other communities to adopt as well, since they are doing the project in an open source format. The quake quiz, however, is a licensed product. If you are interested in more information you can reach Alicia via Twitter or provide a comment below.

Is your organization doing anything similar? Let me know.

A Twitter chat occurred yesterday (1/25/2013) about the role of social media during the ongoing bushfires in Australia. The chat was organized and facilitated by Robert Dunne @Academy911, Joanna Lane @joannalane and Joanne White @joannewhite. Although I haven’t had time to read through the complete archive of hundreds of Tweets, some resources stood out to me that I’d like to share.

One of the items mentioned was this great presentation available on YouTube by CFA (Country Fire Authority) Digital Media Manager, Martin Anderson who discusses the integration of social media into emergency service procedures in Victoria, Australia. Mr. Anderson points out that the full adoption of social media had to come with three main changes in mindset:

1. From: “We hold the info the community needs and we expect them to come to us.”  To: “We realize we need to go to the community.”
2. From: “We will decide what the community needs.” To: “The community will tell us what they need.”
3. From: “The public is a liability.” To: “The public is a resource.” See the full video below:

Some great examples of the many ways the Australian public can stay informed during this crisis were also shared during the discussion on Twitter. One emerging theme is  the move toward providing aggregated information from many different agencies and organizations along with a visualization of that content.

1. A great resource page  by HardenUp.org has been established for the bushfires that provides an aggregation of official social media channels as well as images posted by the public.  HardenUp is a project by Green Cross Australia who’s mission is to prepare the public for a changing climate “in ways that embrace sustainability and community resilience.” The resource page was inspired by the Queensland Public Alerts page, sponsored by the Queensland government.

2. The Country Fire Authority has a similar aggregated social media site aptly  called “Social Media Updates.” The page lists official social posts from the CFA Facebook and Twitter account, as well as from other relevant official accounts including for instance, the Melbourne Fire Bureau or MFB and traffic information from VicRoads, just to name a few.

CFA: Fire Ready Smartphone Application

3. The CFA also has a FireReady mobile app. This app was mentioned during the chat, and I blogged about its features here.

4. The ABC Emergency website is a great resource that provides an aggregated list of all current alerts and warnings.  The site was set up in the wake of the Black Saturday Fires and Brisbane Floods by the Australian Broadcasting Company. I like that they don’t just provide information about the hazard, but also what the public can do to prepare themselves. The preparedness pages also include links to official agencies. For instance, the “Plan for a Bushfire” page has hyperlinks to each of the Fire Emergency Services.  The ABC’s stated purpose for the site:

[The public] can…use this site to plan for an emergency, access the latest emergency resources for your mobile phone, locate official emergency agencies in your State or Territory and learn from the experience of previous major emergencies.”

The caption states: ABC Emergency only publishes warnings from official sources. This is a list of official warnings currently available to the ABC. You should check with other sources for more warnings relevant to your area.

Google Crisis Response Map: Current Fires and Incidents

5. The Google Crisis Response team is also active in this disaster. Their NSW Crisis Map has current bushfire information.  They call this “…a mirror of the NSW Rural Fire Service Current Fires and Incidents map.”

This list represents just a few of the interesting resources made available to the public during this event. I hope these agencies will share their lessons learned: I look forward to hearing more about the role social media continues to play in the land “down-under.” What are you learning?

Thanks to Nathan Hunderwald or @smem911 for ReTweeting some of the best links.