#SMEM Challenge for 2013: “I don’t get it.”

Post by: Kim Stephens

Image by: nglcc.org

An interesting dilemma for social media and emergency management advocates is how to convince the inconvincible. Inevitably at in-person meetings, forums as well as on-line, there is always someone in the crowd that raises their hand and states “I just don’t get it.”  These doubting Thomases are typically folks who do not use these tools for personal communication and have only  heard (or care to listen to) negative information about social networking.

• “The only thing on social media is rumors.”
• “It’s not appropriate for public health organizations to be on social media because of HIPPA.”
• “Why should I  learn these tools? After a disaster the communications infrastructure will be destroyed rendering social media useless.”

and my all time favorite…

• “The only thing on social media is what people had for lunch. Why would I care about that?” (Although, I have to admit, my sister-in-law does tend to post a lot of pictures on Facebook of her cooking.)

This type of sentiment was recently brought to my attention while helping promote the new Accessibility Toolkit. The online wiki “…was developed to empower people with disabilities to use social media for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. This toolkit was developed in response to the fact that not all people with a disability are able to access life saving messages delivered through social media due to the accessibility challenges that the tools currently pose for people with disabilities.”

The promotion of this toolkit was placed on many different blogs, including this one, and in an online forum on LinkedIn.  A first responder, who also stated that he was a long-time time ham radio operator, provided a comment that perplexed me. The comment does, however,  encapsulate the attitude I described above.

I would think that these people with disabilities want to be taken to a safe place and not bother with U tube, twitter, etc. We live in a push button world and now people are lost when the buttons don’t work. My work is SAR (Search and Rescue) and to be honest with you in the last few days I spent to much time on this lap top when I should getting my winter SAR pack together. You have SAR teams, EMT’s, fire rescue, water rescue and even volunteers helping. I think it’s sad to see real people turn to an electronic device for helping them. When everything goes out you have us and I don’t think that will ever change.

I honestly would not have even of known where to start in terms of crafting a response to this gentleman. He obviously cares about people and helping them, but didn’t see how social media could play any sort of role in that effort whatsoever. However,  Eileen Culleton, the Founder and CEO (Voluntary) of the Emergency 2.0 Wiki,  was able to craft a beautiful response. And although her reply mostly points out the benefits of the wiki, I plan to borrow heavily from her statements next time I encounter someone that says: “Social media? I don’t get it.”

Hi, firstly, I’d like to introduce myself. I am the Founder and CEO (voluntary) of the Emergency 2.0 Wiki, which was established by Gov2qld (a community of practice of professionals working in the Gov 2.0 space) after the devastating floods of Queensland and Cyclone Yasi in Australia last year.

I’m not a first responder or CERT or SAR volunteer, or a tech guru. My background is marketing and communications for not for profits, business and government, as well as more recently working in ICT change management for local government and helping them to setup and engage in social media (including for emergencies).

But I do know how it feels to be a disaster survivor. As a child I survived the most devastating hurricane to hit Australia – Cyclone Tracy that struck Darwin, in the Northern Territory, on Christmas Eve in 1974. My family lost everything… our home and contents including our precious pets and family photos.

That was before social media existed, but ham radio did… and I will never forget that when the communications infrastructure was destroyed, due to Darwin’s isolation from the rest of the country, for hours no one knew the cyclone had struck and that a city needed help.

Photo: Australian EM Institute

But, it was a ham radio operator, like yourself, that sent out the SOS call to the world. This was one of the factors that sparked my inspiration for the Wiki. That example of community resilience, in which a member of the public, aided by technology (ham radio) and his networks got help for a city that was so devastated its women and children were evacuated in the biggest airlift that Australia has ever seen.

And now today, thanks to the instant, amplifying power of social media and our networks, we all have that power to save lives… our own lives, and the lives of others. And that includes people with a disability, if we can help them overcome the accessibility challenges that social media currently poses. That is why the Emergency 2.0 Wiki Accessibility Reference Group, of professionals from a diverse range of industry sectors, have joined together across the globe, as volunteers to create an online toolkit and post it on the Wiki to share with the world. They are committed to building resilient communities, wherever we are.

First responders can’t be everywhere. Search and rescue volunteers can’t be everywhere. We, as a community need to use technology to empower ourselves so that we can get out of danger… and that includes people with a disability.

Once they overcome the accessibility challenges of social media, (with help from the tips on the Wiki), people with a disability, like the rest of the public, will be able to receive emergency alerts in real time and take action. And they can also, like the rest of the public, reach out and warn others of danger…

And they can reach out, locally, and globally, to help others impacted by disasters, by using social media. I encourage everyone to take the time to read this blog post by a woman in a wheel chair in Boston, who helped keep a man alive, who was on a ventilator in New York, impacted by power outages from Hurricane Sandy… by using social media to reach people to help. [You can also listen to some of this story which was broadcast on Talk of the Nation on NPR, November 1, 2012: "Sandy Especially Tough on Vulnerable Populations."]

Photo of Nick Dupre. Source: http://littlefreeradical.com/2012/11/04/unconventional-aid-helping-nick-dupree-part-ii/

I respect the contribution you’re making helping others through your volunteer work with SAR. I ask that you please respect the contribution the Emergency 2.0 Wiki volunteer community is making to help empower people, including with disabilities, to use social media to help themselves and others better prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies. If you want to learn how social media can help your SAR volunteer work, the Wiki can help. If things are missing, please let us know. But remember, we are volunteers, just like you. We need you to help us, help you, to help others.

Best regards, Eileen

Well said Eileen!

Related articles

• Top #SMEM Challenges for 2013: I Don’t Have Time! (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Social Media Accessibility Toolkit: New from Emergency 2.0 Wiki (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Social media changes disaster response (brucehensler.typepad.com)

Top #SMEM Challenges for 2013: I Don’t Have Time!

Post by: Kim Stephens

Patrice Cloutier, James Garrow and I have colluded a bit to reflect on SMEM in 2012: James is writing up his top five social media lessons learned during the year; Patrice is taking note of the SMEM great events of 2012 (including disaster events where social media played a pivotal role in providing both situational awareness to first responders as well as vital information to the public); and my self-assigned task is to write about the challenges we face in the year to come. The three of us are equally passionate about  social media, and share the mindset evident in statement from Garrow’s post “Top 5 SMEM Lessons: The Public Uses Social Media”

The public has integrated social media into their lives. The fruits of that integration are demonstrated during every disaster… Ignoring the state of the world is, for an emergency manager, tantamount to malfeasance. Our greatest lesson learned this year is that we can no longer ignore social media or keep it out of our planning.

Nonetheless, I think there is a “but.” Although I agree that emergency managers should no longer ignore social media, there are many challenges that come with getting emergency management professionals proficient with these tools. In this and subsequent posts I will outline some of these challenges and link them to emerging solutions. (I have adapted some of the post below from something I wrote for Western  Regional Homeland Security Council in Massachusetts.)

Challenge #1: “I don’t have time.”

The Passage of Time (Photo credit: ToniVC)

Although there are an increasing number of emergency managers swimming in the social media tide, some folks remain firmly on the beach. They might even know how to swim (for instance use Facebook for personal reasons) but are reluctant to jump in wearing their emergency management  suit.  The explanation these professionals often give is that they don’t have time. Although the statement “I don’t have time” could be code for “I don’t think this is important”  it also could mean a multitude other things. For instance, I don’t have time…

•  to devote to learn the tools;
•  to devote to developing a meaningful social presence;
•  to update social networks during a crisis;
• to answer all of the questions from the public posted to our pages.

These folks also understand that if they build a presence on social media people will come to these sites during an event and expect timely content. This is not a comforting thought. They know that will have set up an expectation for information dissemination that they cannot meet.

Honestly, I completely understand the predicament. Although some organizations have a full-time staff person devoted to social media, most do not. Only bigger cities have a full-time PIO and increasingly, small communities don’t even have a full-time Emergency Manager. Often these part-time EMs are dual hatted, so if they had a couple of hours a week to write and post a few preparedness tips to their Twitter account and Facebook page, during a crisis, they might literally be the same person on the other end of the fire-hose.

Help! Can I Outsource this?

Supplementing staff during a crisis is not new; it is new, however, in terms of social media. The idea of handing over the reigns of these accounts is very difficult concept for some. Who would you trust to be the voice of your organization?  Although this concept  may initially seem like a stretch–I would never allow someone else to be our voice!–there is a perfect example of how outsourcing can work: Incident Management Teams. When an IMT comes into your community you do trust them to do what is required/asked.  However, this arrangement is not without strings attached–a  ”Delegation of Authority” agreement is signed between the two parties detailing expectations. Below is an excerpt from a sample DoA:

You have full authority and responsibility for managing incident operations within the framework of legal statute, current policy, and the broad direction provided in both your verbal and written briefing materials. You are accountable to me. A formal evaluation of your performance will be conducted prior to your departure. This formal evaluation may be followed up within sixty days after your departure once the Agency has had the opportunity to review accountability, claims, financial matters, and other items, which require time to evaluate.

Although IMTs often do include public information officers, it is not realistic to assume that communities will have the opportunity to use an IMT every time there is an incident. But even small, localized events can stretch resources and limit an organization’s ability to “deal” with social media. This is why the concept of a Virtual Operations Support Team is increasingly gaining in popularity. For just a bit of background, repeating content from previous posts, a VOST (a concept developed by Jeff Phillips) can be defined as a team that accomplishes some or all of the following:

• Establishes a social media presence for an organization that previously did not use social networking tools to communicate with the public;
• Monitors social media communications;
• Handles matters that can be executed remotely through digital means such as assisting with the management of donations or volunteers;
• Follows social media and traditional media trends and reports back to the organization what is being seen;
• Communicates issues and concerns being expressed by the public (e.g. represents the citizen’s perspective;
• Identifies misinformation or angry postings that need to be corrected or dealt with;
• Provides a supportive voice for the organization and its efforts;
• Amplifies the organization’s message by repeating content  (via personal and/or official social media accounts);
• Compiles media coverage (traditional and non-traditional) by date;
• Documents social media conversations.

Who serves on the VOST?

Unlike IMTs, VOSTs are not pre-formed, nationally trained teams. One current misperception is that the “VOST”  will swoop into your community after a disaster.  Although there are people who work on VOSTs for specific communities or organizations, those folks have been pre-identified by the community  (I cannot emphasize that enough).

In other words, if you are interested in having a group (or even just one person) ready help with social media after a disaster, you have to take responsibility to foster that relationship and come to a terms of agreement before the disaster. Communities have done this in several different ways (explained in more detail below). Some have turned to CERT members (e.g. Anaheim California’s Office of Emergency Management); others have tapped  savvy social media community members (e.g. Cecil County, Maryland); and still others, including the NYC Public Health Department, have developed a VOST from within their agency by training their own employees–e.g. people willing to add additional duties for the opportunity to do something unique during a disaster response.

Like an IMT, VOST members can supplement resources and potentially even bring in a new set of skills.

VOST Models 

From my perspective, three models have emerged for the use and structure of VOSTs. Interestingly, the model or category an organization falls into seems to be a reflection of the both the level of trust with VOST members as well as the level of trust and knowledge/comfort with social media in general. The models I have identified are

1. External Support (Amplify and Monitor Only)
2. Hybrid Support (Amplify, Monitor, and Respond on behalf of the organization, but with specific limits)
3. Internal/Embedded (Full range of social media duties and support)

1. External VOST Support:

Organizations that are both new to social media and the concept of a “VOST” might consider using support from team members in a more conservative manner. In this model the following support might be provided:

• Follow social media and traditional media trends and reports back to the organization what is being seen;
• Communicate issues and concerns being expressed by the public (e.g. represents the citizen’s perspective);
• Identify misinformation or angry postings that need to be corrected or dealt with;
• Provide a supportive voice for the organization and its efforts;
• Amplify the organization’s message by repeating content  (via personal and/or established community VOST social accounts).

Team members could provide this support from afar–in fact, getting this type of assistance from folks outside of your community might be a great option since they would be out of the impacted area and would therefore have power in their home, or office, etc. Remember, monitoring social media does not have to happen in your EOC.

• But who? Team members could be emergency managers from the other side of the state,  for instance.
• But how? It is important to note that with any of these models, communication between the team members and the organization is vital for success. For example, if the team identifies a potential issue that needs to be addressed quickly (e.g. people posting angry comments on Mayor’s Facebook page about conditions in the shelters) they need assurance that the customer/organization has seen this red flag.

2. Hybrid Support

In this model, the team does everything identified in the external support model, but also responds to questions from community members and posts content on behalf of the organization.  Unlike the model above, these individuals would be made administrators of those accounts. In this approach, however, there are specific limitations placed on the team members. For instance, they are allowed to post on behalf of the organization, but only information that has already been cleared by their organization’s PIO or posted on other official government accounts.

• But who? I have seen this model used with CERT volunteers.
• But how? Similar to the way 311 employees use pre-scripted responses to citizen’s questions, the social media volunteers are provided answers to frequently asked questions that they can type into the Facebook page, or post to the Twitter account. They would be responsible for monitoring these accounts and flagging any out-of-ordinary questions and obtaining quick answers: e.g. Is Elkton Road flooded?

3. Internal/Embedded

In this model, the VOST team leader  is given the full range of social media duties. This model is often utilized by small communities that do not have a full-time (or even part-time PIO) and the Agency’s staff person responsible for social media communication has many other duties during the response to a crisis or disaster.

• But who? Often this type of arrangement is made with people very familiar with the organization and maybe even retired PIOs. The organization has an established, trusted relationship with the person or team members.
• But how? In order to provide this type of support, it is often best to have the team, or a least the team leader, embedded at the Emergency Operations Center.

There are many examples of what VOST members have accomplished during the past two years. Click on the links below to see some of the social media pages they have built. Sorry for the extra-long post. I hope you have made it to the end! If you have any questions about this concept please let me know.

http://barrypointorfire.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/barrypoint-orfire-814-morning-briefing-pics-jp/
www.twitter.com/barrypointfire
http://www.facebook.com/BarryPointOrFire

http://longdrawfire.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/photos-from-longdraw-orfire-jp/
https://twitter.com/LongDrawORFire
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Long-Draw-ORFire/123506971124484?ref=hl

http://tablemountainwafire.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/tablemountain-wafire-photo-mop-up-at-table-mountain-fire-st/
https://twitter.com/TableMtnWAFire
http://www.facebook.com/TableMountainWAFire?ref=hl

http://trinityridgefire.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/trinityridge-idfire-public-information-map-nh/
https://twitter.com/TrinityRidgeID
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trinity-Ridge-IDFire/355697117846919?ref=hl

http://wenatcheecomplexfire.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/wenatcheecomplex-wafire-information-station-photo-marh/https://twitter.com/WenatcheeWAFire
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wenatchee-Complex-WAFire/522867564394287?ref=hl

http://wildlandfires.wordpress.com/rma/
https://twitter.com/#!/WildlandFires
http://www.facebook.com/WildlandFiresinfo?ref=hl

http://nyvost.vosg.us/about/
https://twitter.com/nyvost
http://www.facebook.com/NYVOST?fref=ts

 

Social Media Accessibility Toolkit: New from Emergency 2.0 Wiki

English: A collection of pictograms. Three of them used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing those three and all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Post by: Kim Stephens

One question that inevitably comes up when discussing social media with emergency managers  is the problem of accessibility: Is the content on social media available to everyone in my community? In turn, community members with disabilities want access to content on social networks and want to use these tools during a crisis. Although there are answers about how best to address these concerns, before today, solutions were not in one handy location. That has changed with the launch of the Accessibility Toolkit on the Emergency 2.0 Wiki (full disclosure–I was involved with planning the launch of this site). The wiki is a voluntary initiative of the Gov 2.0 QLD Community of Practice in Australia, launched in December 2011.

The purpose of the toolkit is stated clearly on the site:

The Emergency 2.0 Wiki Accessibility Toolkit was developed to empower people with disabilities to use social media for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. This toolkit was developed in response to the fact that not all people with a disability are able to access life saving messages delivered through social media due to the accessibility challenges that the tools currently pose.

International Collaboration

The kit was pulled together with a team, they call  a reference group, which included individuals from Australia, the United States and New Zealand. Dr. Scott Hollier, one of the group’s members as well as an Advisory Committee Representative at Media Access Australia, provides some context for why the group felt this tool was necessary:

“We’ve witnessed from recent disasters that social media has the potential to save lives, but people with disabilities often have difficulty accessing important messages as the social media platforms are inaccessible. For example, the main Twitter website can’t be easily read with a screen reader, the device that reads out information on a screen for people who are blind, but important emergency information can be accessed by using an alternative site such as Easy Chirp to read tweets,” he said.  “As people tweet in real time, an accessible app such as Easy Chirp can provide people who are blind with immediate notification of when a fire starts or when flash floods hit a town,” said Dr Hollier.

Information for People With A Disability

The toolkit includes a list of tips, resources and apps that are intended to assist people with a disability to overcome accessibility challenges of social media. Easy Chirp, for instance, is described and linked to, along with information about and links to emergency apps, such as those intended for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing that vibrate and flash when sending emergency alerts. The wiki also includes emergency preparedness YouTube videos that either use sign language or are captioned.

Information for the Professional Communicator

For the emergency sector, government, community, media and business professionals there are practical guidelines listed that will help them make their social media messages more accessible.  For example, information is provided about how to use apps to add captioning on YouTube Videos for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.

One of the best aspects of Emergency 2.0 Wiki is that it is a free volunteer-based resource. Their goal is laudable:   “…to build resilience by empowering all sectors of the community with the knowledge to use social media and networks in emergencies.” The fact that they are working to accomplished this goal via international collaboration, knowledge sharing and crowdsourcing locally and globally, is the cherry on top!

If you have any questions about the wiki simply leave a comment here or contact Stephanie Jo Kent, Working Group on Emergency Interpreting at Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, Inc; Founder, Learning Labs for Resiliency.

Related articles

• Accessible Social Media–Internet Librarian Digitally Accessible Panel (slideshare.net)

Observations on Hurricane Sandy and Disaster Networks

Hurricane Sandy: 10/30/2012 (Photo credit: ccho)

Guest Post by: Rakesh Bharania

Rakesh Bharania is an engineer with Cisco Tactical Operations (http://t.co/bYsKdQG). The opinions in this article do not represent Cisco)

My team and I recently returned from a deployment in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy where we worked to support public safety and disaster relief NGOs in the states of New York and New Jersey.  This storm, regardless of what you want to call it (“Superstorm” seemed to be a popular moniker in the media, since the storm technically wasn’t a hurricane when it made landfall) seemed to usher in a whole new wave of technology in disaster response, and I think it’s worth trying to capture a few observations while the memories are still fresh and the after-action-reports are yet to be written.  So, a standard disclaimer applies:  this is really my own opinion, and not those of my teammates, or my employer.

But let’s rewind a little bit:  the real coming-out party for disaster networks, crowdsourced information and so on (“Disaster ICT”) was the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.  Since the need was so urgent, and more importantly, there was nobody to say “no,” many new applications and technology architectures got their trial by fire in Haiti – it really was a real-life test lab for crowdsourcing, crisismapping, and hastily formed networks to a scale thereto unseen.  But I think the experience of Haiti also had set up unreasonable expectations in the nascent disaster technology community:  since so many people came to Disaster ICT as part of the Haiti response, the implicit assumption in many of their minds was that any future disaster was going to look like Haiti.  But subsequent disasters in the United States and around the world has proved what I thought initially: Haiti was always the exception, rather than the rule regarding how disasters were responded to.

So given that you couldn’t just “cowboy it” like you did in Haiti, what was interesting and different about technology during the Hurricane Sandy response?

1.  Empowerment.  From the Occupy Sandy movement to Burners Without Borders to any number of tech NGOs on the ground, communications technology and specifically social media allowed groups to coordinate among themselves, engage those in need, and solicit donors in a near-realtime basis.   We’d seen some of this before, of course, but the scale of this was quite impressive.  The downside is that some of these organizations were relatively inexperienced with the deployment and support of emergency technology and unfortunately became more of a hindrance than a help to the overall response effort.

2.  Significant deployment of Ka-Band VSATs.  For the first time, I started to see a number of satellite deployments that were based on the Ka-band, as opposed to the more widely deployed Ku-band.  The advantage of the Ka systems is that their bandwidths are higher (I saw systems that were able to get 10-15 MBps download speed) … but the open question we had was how stable were these systems going to be when it rained?  Ka-band satellite data services are more suscepti ble to “rain fade”, which is attenuation that occurs due to rain or snow.  Remember that a significant Nor’easter hit the same area Sandy did about a week after the latter storm rolled through.  Disaster responders will no doubt be discussing the merits of the higher bandwidth Ka-band compared to the lower bandwidth but more reliable Ku-band in the coming months.

3.  The rise of 4G LTE.  Yes, there were outages of the cellular telephone network and we saw crews from Verizon and other wireless carriers working feverishly to restore service to areas that had been knocked out.  But while we were working in Coney Island, we noticed that while the area had had no power since the storm struck, there was a very strong Verizon LTE network that was operational, and we would get up to 20 Mbps download, 7 Mbps upload speeds on average.  That was more than enough for us to move public safety agencies to – and the VSATs we had just deployed were rapidly decommissioned in favor of LTE-based solutions that were cheaper, had less latency, and provided more bandwidth.  While I can’t say our subjective experience was the same across the disaster area, I think we proved a valuable new tool in our disaster toolbox and will be happy to take it out again in future emergencies where it makes sense.

Rakesh deploying the VSAT in Coney Island.

4.  Video really does change everything.  I know that the social media experts are looking at how Instagram was the breakout sensation of the Sandy response, and maybe in the crowdsourced community, that remains true.  (I’ll spare you a discussion about how Instagram’s “creative manipulations” actually make it less useful for emergencies for another time).  However, we had one example of where a public safety problem was emerging and leadership at the emergency operations center had no understanding of the reality on the ground and therefore the right resources were not being assigned.   We put cameras on the problem, shared the video via WebEx and once the commanders could actually see the problem, things were fixed within fifteen minutes.  I think the future for video in emergency response, especially with the availability of higher bandwidth links looks very very good.

5.  Tech For All:  During Hurricane Katrina, I could see the evolution of technology underway (and this was in an age before smartphones!) where tech started off as something for headquarters-level leadership.  The second phase of this evolution was getting tech into the hands of responders in the field.  I would argue that we are largely in the middle of this phase of the transition.   The last phase, emerging and where we saw a lot of progress during Sandy, was in getting tech into the hands of the survivors of the disaster so that they could communicate with friends and loved ones, apply for disaster assistance, etc.

Wait, I’m kinda lying about the linear progression of this sequence.  Yes, we have technology largely at the headquarters/EOC level.  And we are working on the second part – getting tech into the hands of the responders.  But the truth is that the last part – technology in the hands of the disaster public, already exists.  The growth of mobile technology, smartphones and tablets and the whole Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has largely empowered those communities that have access to those technologies.   This is something I didn’t see in 2005 – the “consumerization” of technology has empowered disaster survivors in a really meaningful way.  We as the emergency response community do not have to figure out how to get endpoints into the hands of disaster survivors – BYOD has taken care of that for us.  What we need to sometimes solve for is how to get them connectivity – a different problem.   It’s really Bring Your Own Device to the Disaster (BYODD). We still have to be mindful that this isn’t universal, and that communities with poorer access to technology and technology literacy might still need a hand … but Sandy hit a very tech-savvy population for the most part, with modern communications and technology readily available.

Yes, there were a number of challenges on the ground.  These, in no particular order, were the ones I saw.   None of them are insurmountable, and in many cases they’re to be expected considering this whole area is relatively new and certainly evolving at a ridiculous rate.  We’ll get there, but it’d be nice if the community would have some further discussions around the following…

1.  Sustainability.  It’s one thing to deploy the latest tech toys in an emergency, but once you turn up the service (and sometimes that’s hard enough), relatively few organizations had any plans for supporting moves/adds/changes and were poorly equipped in gear and knowledge to sustain and support the things they’d deployed.  Expert techs may be deployed for a limited amount of time – and then they go home …. what happens if something breaks at that point?   Sometimes it is better to not deploy technology in the first place, than it is to deploy tech that can’t be supported or sustained over the duration.

2.  Stop using FEMA’s name in vain!  Several tech NGOs came to us looking for support on various projects, and a few would invariably name-drop “so-and-so at FEMA wants to see this happen…”  If that’s true, show me the contract!  Show me the accountability!  As a tech company, we want to help, but we need to prioritize where we help.  It’s basic triage. This kind of noise only makes our decision-making harder.  And it creates the impression that FEMA itself is clueless (left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing) – which isn’t actually warranted by the situation.  Don’t degrade your customer’s name and goodwill in order to enhance your own.

3.  Coordinate On The Ground.  If you are deploying a technology project, the coordinator for that project really needs to be on the ground and have “ground truth” about the need and the deployment.  I saw several projects running astray because the primary coordinator was remote, and often there was a gap between what that person was telling us vs what the members of the project were telling us on the ground.

4.  Wearing Different Hats is OK, But Be Clear About Which Hat You’re Wearing.  There are only a few groups that do “disaster tech”, and it is not uncommon for them to collaborate with each other on larger efforts, or to act in concert with a governmental or other body.  But it is vitally important to be clear which project or organization you’re affiliated with on a given project. If a group comes to me and asks for equipment and I give them equipment, I need to be clear that when two days later they’re asking for the same stuff again that it’s for a different project or a different context.  Or worse yet, if work with two different groups on what appears to be the same project, but the groups themselves are approaching us independently of one another…

The response to Sandy shows that Internet communications is increasingly important for responder-to-responder, responder-to-public, and public-to-public communications.  The rate of technology change is increasing, with the average mobile device (smartphone or tablet) being replaced about once every 16 months or so.  So it’s important to plan for technology response using an all-hazards, all-methods approach that accommodates the fact that the technology, device, communications method, or application may change from day to day, or incident to incident.  Technology in the Sandy response was largely successful, and learning from our experiences there will help set us all up for future success on the next disaster (and there is always a next one!)

I want to end this note with two points:  firstly, “communications” are always about the message and never about the medium that message travels in.  It is too easy for us as technologists to become enamored of our own technology, and miss opportunities to do it better, faster or cheaper.  Remember that communicators, in and of themselves, have never saved a single life or restored a single community to health.  Responders on the ground, working one-on-one with the survivors do that.   And unless our fancy toys and blinking lights facilitates meaningful action on the ground, it’s just noise.  Any “disaster tech” that doesn’t influence the reality on the ground is just trivia.  Think about a brilliant, beautiful crisismap that is put together by lots of volunteers and is used by exactly nobody on the ground, for example.

My last point is this: even though we are technology first responders, and our chosen method of responding to the crisis is digital, we can never allow ourselves to forget that these are human emergencies that we are engaged in, not technological ones.  We must lead with the basic human traits of compassion and empathy with regards to our fellow responders and the communities we are all trying to serve.  Sometimes a hug delivered at the right moment is worth more than all the routers and switches in your truck.

Thanks to Rakesh for allowing me to share this with my readers! 

Five SMEM Observations and Recommendations From Hurricane Sandy

Post by: Kim Stephens

The documentation of social media’s use and impact during Hurricane Sandy has already begun. Patrice Cloutier wrote a great summary post “10 reasons why there’ll now be a before Sandy and post-Sandy in SMEM,” which is an excellent starting point. Not only are his 10 reasons dead-on, but he also links to quite a few articles about Sandy written by others in the social media and emergency management community. I have also been mulling over what occurred.  Below I’ve have my top five observations/lessons learned and some humble recommendations for local first response organizations. Spoiler alert: all the recommendation relate to planning.

1. Observation: Citizens will use social media to ask for emergency assistance during large-scale disasters. I often tell Emergency Management organizations not to be too concerned about citizens posting 911-type “calls” of assistance to their Facebook page or Twitter account. From my perspective this is not something you see very often. However, there is one huge caveat: if people can’t get through to 911 they will ask for assistance anywhere they think their voice will be heard–especially during a major crisis event. This exact scenario happened to the New York Fire Department, specifically the Twitter account @FDNY.  (See also the CNN story about @FDNY.)

@RSindh Please keep trying to call 911. I will try to reach dispatchers now.—
  (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

PLEASE NOTE: *Do not* tweet emergency calls. Please call 911. If it is not an emergency, please call 311. #NYC #Sandy—
  (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

It should be noted that time and again the woman managing the account reminded people to call 911. Nonetheless, she did pass the information on to dispatch and told people as much, versus abruptly dismissing distressed citizens.

What lessons can other emergency management or response organizations learn from this example:

1. Whomever is interacting with the public needs to be able to handle pressure well–training and/or experience is necessary.
2. Social media managers need to be aware of what to do if people ask for assistance and, if need be, should be empowered to pass along that information.
3. A close connection from the social media manager to Ops is required– they need to have a good understanding of the situation in order to answer questions (see also the story about @ConEdison). This, in turn, will keep the call volume to 911 down–freeing up capacity for true emergency calls. The @FDNY account manager was well informed and when she didn’t know the answer she simply stated: “I’ll find out.”

@hunters1977 I don't have detailed info right now, sorry. Will try to update when I can.—
  (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

Recommendation: Organizations should not assume that the statement on their Facebook and Twitter accounts “Please do not post the need for emergency assistance to this site. Call 911” will stop this from happening during a large-scale crisis. Standard operating procedures should be written for how this will be handled and the SOPs should be tested in exercises.

2. Observation: People want hyper-local information.

Impacted citizens are not interested in what is happening in the next State or even the next town–they want to know what roads they can use to get home, where they can buy milk and ice or get a hot meal, and when the power will be back on. This kind of content is best delivered by the local community for the local community. However, once your public safety organization starts posting that kind of vital “hyper-local” content it can result in popularity (as many as 800 new likes in one day can be expected during an event). A consequence of this new-found popularity:  maintenance.

Quite a few small-community emergency management organizations only have one person dedicated to posting content to social media.  This is usually more than enough when there isn’t a major crisis, however,  large-scale events require ’round-the-clock staffing.

Recommendation: Organizations need to build capacity for participating in social networks. If it is determined that they cannot provide their own back-up support in order to staff a social media “desk” for 18-24 hours, then they should plan ahead for assistance. For example, the emergency management organization in Suffolk County, NY developed a relationship with social media volunteers, known as “Virtual Operations Support Teams,”  before this disaster. This was due to the persistence and excellent leadership of one of their community members,  JoAnna Lane (@Joannalane). But even if your community doesn’t have a “Jo” to get the ball rolling,  the concept of a VOST is one every emergency management organization should explore.

3. Observation: Citizens WILL BE viewing your content on mobile devices. I was also an impacted citizen. Once we lost power I turned to my smart phone for information and what I found was a little frustrating. (I’m using my own local county as an example, but I’m sure they are not alone.) One of the great things about social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, is that they are designed to be viewed on smart phones, your local emergency management website, however, is probably NOT.  Therefore, organizations should take advantage of these mobile-ready sites and post as much information as possible to them (this does not mean you can’t also place the same information on your website). Furthermore, Facebook now allows for posts that are quite long, so listing road closures, for example, could easily be accomplished either as an update or as a “Note.” Furthermore, posting content that requires a lot of bandwidth to view should also be avoided.

Recommendation: Standard “social media” operating procedures should take into account the devices people will be using, especially during power outages. Effort should be made to plan for how to provide as much information as possible in small “digestible” bite sizes.

Photo Credit: BioLiteStove.com

4. Observation:  People need to be able to charge their phones! The fact that emergency response organizations can now provide information directly to citizens via their cell phones is a great new reality…but those phones have to have power. Images of NYer’s going to great lengths charge their cell phones are everywhere. I even read something yesterday on the Canadian Red Cross blog about how people were charging their phones with a jerry-rigged system based on fire. The author stated: “BioLite‘s CampStoves use the fire from burning wood to charge mobile devices and cook at the same time.” The need to charge phones is simple: information is the vital to survival and recovery.

Recommendation: All communities (large or small) should plan for how they will help citizens get information via mobile devices. This might mean figuring out how to set up charging stations in shelters or other central locations (possibly in partnership with the private sector) as well as how to provide free wifi.

5. Observation: Social Media works during disasters. As Patrice Cloutier stated:

“Many governments, at all levels, used social media to communicate with their constituents before, during and after the passage of Sandy. Again, social networks (particularly Twitter) proved to be effective emergency information tools.”

I’ve heard the argument for years from various emergency response officials that they do not think social media is important because it won’t “work” during a large-scale disaster. They base this on the notion that during a catastrophic event all communication systems will fail. It might be true that someday we may experience a disaster of catastrophic proportions where every system fails, everywhere. What is more likely, though, is the occurrence of events such Sandy. Yes, there were some system failures, but cellular networks, once again, proved to be resilient.  By choosing not to plan for the use of  social media or text communications based on this “catastrophic” assumption seems to be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water.

Recommendation: Emergency management and response organizations should plan for the use of multiple communication tools to reach the public before, during and after disasters.

Of course these are broad-based observations that  in no-way address every aspect of social media’s use, or problems of use, during Sandy, specifically I did not delve into the open-data or mapping debate. I’m sure we will all be dissecting this event for months to come. If you have an interesting observation, please let me know.

Related articles

• Social media a news source and tool during Superstorm Sandy (cbsnews.com)
• FEMA debunks Hurricane Sandy rumors with new Snopes-like page (betanews.com)

Should Your Public Safety Organization be Blogging?

Post by: Kim Stephens

With Hurricane Sandy quickly approaching, I thought it might be interesting to discuss why a blog is an important platform for communicating information to your community. Even though I use this blogging site, I have never written explicitly about how public safety organizations are using or could use this powerful tool.

Why Blog?

Blogging has been around for a long time, relatively speaking in the social media world. With the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, YouTube etc. some people thought blogging would fade away, however, other social networks have actually increased the amount of traffic to blogs, not vice-versa. Why?  Blogs are part of the social ecosystem. If your organization has an “integrated social ecosystem” it means that all of the content posted on each platform points to and supports the other. For example, if you write a blog post, some people may find the article by clicking a link you provided in a Tweet–in turn, other people may realize you have a Twitter account by seeing the Twitter feed on your blog; folks found your blog by clicking on a link from your website; they found the website by watching a video you produced on YouTube.

Does all of this seem a bit redundant? Couldn’t you simply post everything to one platform? I am not suggesting that your organization should participate on each of these social sites, however, each one does bring unique ways to provide information to your community and increases the chance that people who need the content will see it. Nonetheless, deciding to blog should start, at a minimum, by answering these three questions:

1. What are the benefits to our organization for using this form of outreach?
2. Do we have clear goals and objectives for this tool?
3. Do we have the resources to support the use of this platform–e.g. who will write the content?

Top Five Reasons to use a Blog

Standing up a blog site to disseminate public health and safety information can provide several distinct benefits:

1. A blog provides a place to discuss a topic that may be too complex for other channels and to give your topic or program a more personal and engaging presence than a website allows. (Source CDC)
2. Since comments can be reviewed before being posted it can be considered a less risky platform;
3. You can choose a free blog site with easy-to-use/easy-to-learn user interfaces (free attractive themes as well).
4. It is easier to update a blog versus a website–which is an important consideration for crisis communications. Furthermore, some blogging platforms (such as WordPress.com) are mobile ready, meaning you can  post from your iPad or iPhone, Android or Blackberry.  The blog also looks quite nice to viewers via these same devices.
5.  Analytics are included–allowing you to understand if you are reaching your audience.

Public Safety Example

 WildLandFires.Wordpress.com

This wordpress.com blog “Wild Land Fires” was stood up by the USDA Forest Service  and cooperating agencies during the summer of 2012 to provide information from the incident managers in charge of each fire in the region, which includes South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas. The site also included statewide and region-wide content. The purpose of the blog was to offer citizens a comprehensive, interagency look at wildland fires.

WYOMING FIRE MAP JUNE 6 -JULY 9

The content included maps (an example from the site has been embedded on the right), updates, and links for detailed information about individual fires. Each listed state had at least one active fire, most had more than three.  For example, by clicking on South Dakota, the user could choose between the White Draw Fire, the Highlands Fire or the Crow Peak Fire.

This was a bit of an experiment by all involved since no interagency “social networking/collaborative” project of this nature had been tried before. I interviewed the project lead, Kris Ericksen, PIO for the Portland National Incident Management Team (a full time Incident Management Team), and she provided some great insights to how and why they decided to use these tools. She indicated that the blog, as well as all of the associated social media sites (Google+, a Twitter account, as well as a Facebook page) were stood up for the response because it is now an expectation of the citizen. She said “We are living in a refresh button world. People expect you to be listening and to answer their questions.”  She acknowledged that this is difficult for some public safety professionals who are used to message control and sometimes fear what the public might say.

Why did they use a blog and other social sites when they already had inciweb? Answer, because these sites allow you to post and host things that inciweb cannot, for example, high resolution maps and podcasts, to name two. Furthermore, inciweb does not have a feedback mechanism–by using social media, you are building interactions, and hopefully, trust and credibility, with the community.

There were a few limitations, however, with the free blog site. For one, although the maps could be loaded and viewed, the ability to provide interactive maps was restricted with the .com versus the non-free .org version. They also learned from this effort about best practices regarding how to organize the blog and what templates to choose (there were some complaints, for example, about the black background).

Of note, they did place the blog in a social ecosystem–as mentioned, all of the other social sites they were using were linked to the blog (which they highlight on the “Welcome” landing page) and when a new blog post went up it was Tweeted out, linked to on Google+ and mentioned on Facebook.

What platform is best?

There are several blogging platforms:

• www.blogger.com 
• www.livejournal.com 
• www.wordpress.com 
• www.tumblr.com 

The two I would recommend are: Blogger.com ( a Google product) or WordPress.com (the site you are currently viewing is on wordpress.com). Each one has pros and cons, but the technology is quite similar. Ultimately it is your organization’s decision, but HowTo.gov (a federal site) recommends following these guidelines when choosing a tool:

• What are your overall goals, budget, and technical capabilities?
• Decide whether a particular tool is affordable, fits into your current infrastructure, and gives you what you need to meet the goals of your blog.
• Do you need a hosted or stand-alone blog?
  • Hosted blog: a company provides the space to store (host) your blog. Blog hosting may be free or fee-based, and each company may offer a different array of services.
  • Stand-alone blog: you host your blog on your own network. It allows great freedom to customize your blog, and gives you full control of the design; however, it is more complicated and costly than a hosted blog.
• Will your blog be written by one person, or multiple authors?
  • Multiple-author blogging might have different requirements, such as separate accounts for each blogger.
• Where will you post?( e.g. Do you need a tool that allows remote posting, from mobile devices, etc.?)
• Does the tool comply with government policy–such as Section 508 accessibility guidelines, to ensure it’s accessible for people with disabilities or  security policy–to ensure it’s in a securely hosted environment?

Resources:

• Follow this link to see features of WordPress: “Getting Started Support.”
• The video below, How to start a Blogger.com site, gives you a quick overview their platform:

More resources:

• HowTo.gov–blogs
• CDC Social Media Toolkit
• IACP Center for Social Media–Blogs
• IACP: Blogging Guide

(This content was originally posted on WMASMEM.wordpress.com as part of a project I was involved with sponsored by the Western Region Homeland Security Council.)

Canadian Red Cross Social Media Survey

Post by: Kim Stephens

Texting on a qwerty keypad phone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Below is the press release from the Canadian Red Cross that details the survey they conducted of citizen use (or desired use) of social networking in a disaster.  You can download the entire report here: CRC Factum 10 03 12

“The survey, Social Media in Emergencies, is the first of its kind in Canada to look at habits and trends around the use of social media in disasters. Key findings include:

• 64 per cent of Canadians use social media sites, 62 per cent of whom participate nearly every day
• 63 per cent think disaster and emergency response agencies, including fire and police, should be prepared to respond to calls for help that are posted on social media networks
• About one third of respondents (35 per cent) think emergency services would respond to a request for help posted on social media, 74 per cent of whom believe help would arrive within one hour
• 54 per cent of Canadians say they would use social media to let loved ones know they are safe in an emergency
•   Although television (39 per cent) and radio (26 per cent) are the preferred ways of receiving news about an emergency, one third (31 per cent) of Canadians say they would prefer various electronic methods, such as web sites, social media or cell phones
• While the majority of Canadians say they have personally experienced disasters, 66 per cent have not taken steps to prepare themselves for an emergency
• The main reasons cited for not taking steps to prepare include: perception that a disaster is unlikely to occur in their area (27 per cent); never thought about it (21 per cent); and no time/never got around to it (12 per cent)

“Information is key to keeping people safe in an emergency,” says Conrad Sauvé, secretary general of the Canadian Red Cross. “With the majority of Canadians already engaged on social networking sites, these platforms can be used to get more information on local emergencies and inform people how they can give or receive help.”

In emergencies, the Canadian Red Cross uses social networks to share important updates, provide preparedness information and respond to questions from affected communities.

Across Canada, there have been many disasters in the last year, including wildfires, flooding, hurricanes and tornadoes. In addition, the Red Cross helps thousands of families each year affected by house fires.

With so many Canadians reporting they are unprepared for emergencies, the Canadian Red Cross is stressing that families prepare for disasters by having enough food, water and provisions to sustain themselves for 72 hours.”

  Contact info: www.redcross.ca;  Facebook (facebook.com/canadianredcross) or  Twitter (@redcrosscanada).

New Social Media Monitoring Tool: CrisisTracker

Post by: Kim Stephens

The post on this site “Data Data Everywhere…Monitoring Social Media in a Crisis” is my most popular, it seems everyone is looking for tools to help with the enormous task of organizing and making sense of the torrent of information provided through social media platforms during large scale incidents. Phd candidate Jakob Rogstadius of the University of Madeira‘s Interactive Technologies Institute commented on that post with a link to a new tool they are calling “CrisisTracker.”  He indicated that the tool is currently being tested with a deployment in Syria to collect and organize millions of tweets related to the ongoing civil war. The tool’s design team includes researchers at Madeira University, University of Oulu and IBM Research.

See the video below which describes the platform and its functionality. The about page of their site also has some good information including a comparison between the tool and Ushahidi. They state:

The biggest difference between the platform and Ushahidi is that Ushahidi focuses on curation of user-submitted reports, while CrisisTracker mines Twitter for reports, clusters them, and supports curation of report clusters. Both systems require humans to annotate pieces of information with meta-data such as location and report category.

Introduction to CrisisTracker from Jakob Rogstadius on Vimeo.

Let me know what you think.

Connecting Grassroots to Government: A Wilson Center Workshop

The Woodrow Wilson Plaza located in the Federal Triangle area of Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Post by: Kim Stephens

This week the Commons Lab of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will be hosting a workshop titled: “Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management.” This event is being held in collaboration with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation, the International Association for Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ESRI, TechChange, NetHope, and Project EPIC.  As the title suggests, the focus will be on how citizen or crowdsourced data generated from “diverse perspectives” can be effectively utilized by government response officials.  However, interestingly, the intended audience is federal officials. Their materials state:  

This roundtable will focus on US federal government’s opportunities and challenges for facilitating greater public engagement in the full-cycle of disaster management through social media, crowdsourcing methods, crisis mapping, and open innovation.

The Workshop Background Reading  material outlines the anticipated discussion framework. Specifically, they hope to address these questions:

• Can citizens generate inputs to critical decisions? If so, with what kind of speed and what degree of accuracy?
• What does the research show, and how are the best ideas being translated into practice?
• How have agencies successfully navigated potential roadblocks to the use of citizen- generated information, such as privacy, procurement, or the Paperwork Reduction Act?
• When and how is it possible to innovate through open and participatory design with citizens and communities?

The read-ahead material is quite a good resource in-and-of itself. The 13-page fully cited and sourced document provides information on the following topics:

• Data efficiency and accuracy
• Evaluation Frameworks (e.g. how do we understand volunteered information production)
• Research Challenges
• Legal and Policy Issues
  • Privacy and Confidentiality
  • Liability
  • Paperwork Reduction Act (and OMB Social Media Memo)
  • Intellectual Property
• Models of Successful Collaboration
• Current State of Technology and Future Development

You Can Participate

According to their event information page, even though the workshop is full,  the majority of the panel discussions will be available live via the Wilson Center webpages. They state:

• In addition, we had so much fun with TechChange helping us with our last event (Crowdsourcing and USAID Development Credit Loans) that we’ve asked them to facilitate the social media engagement for two keynote sessons:
  • Keynote Discussion: Decision Maker Information Needs on Thursday, September 13th, from 8:30 – 10:00 AM Eastern, and
  • Keynote on Connecting Grassroots to Government through Open Innovation on Friday, September 14th, from 1:00 – 2:00 PM US Eastern.

People can also interact with the panelists by submitting comments and questions:

• Click on the TechChange’s DG2G Event Page
• Follow the live webcast discussion on Twitter using hashtag: #DG2G
• You also can email your questions for the panelists before and during the live webcast: DG2@TechChange.org
  

This looks like a really interesting event, and even though the focus if federal, my guess is that quite a lot of the information will translate to the local level. What will be your question for the panelist?

One Tweet Tells the Story of How to Engage

Post by: Kim Stephens

Although Hurricane Isaac ( or #Isaac if you are on Twitter) has still yet to decide where it wants to make landfall in the United States, it has already produced some pretty interesting social media lessons from my perspective. One tweet stood out for me:

Good luck w #Isaac rdcrss.org/SUlfNq RT @ShelbyElaineee Going through my first hurricane, I'm Actually really scared.—
American Red Cross (@RedCross) August 26, 2012

In this tweet, a person states “Going through my first Hurricane. I’m actually really scared.”  The American Red Cross answered them by retweeting and adding a simple “Good Luck” to the message, but they also included a link to preparedness information.

At first glance this tweet doesn’t seem that noteworthy. Upon full inspection, however, it can be seen as a representation of  how monitoring social media with specific key words (in this case it was probably “hurricane” since the tweet did not mention Isaac) can create opportunities for engagement, a way to share vital information, as well as a way to help people going through stressful situations. Furthermore, the ARC tweet was repeated 17 times, reaching 1000s.

The citizen that sent out that tweet to no one in particular was probably surprised that the American Red Cross responded to them. They might have felt the “digital hug” that the ARC likes to talk about when discussing their social media efforts, and I bet she felt a bit of reassurance–something along the lines of “…if that organization is listening, then I might be able to turn to them if I need help.” I’m also hoping that the person checked the hurricane information page and took as many last minute steps to prepare as possible.

What the citizen, I’m sure, didn’t understand, is the amount of dedication to social media monitoring it took to be able to answer them. The American Red Cross is legend in its social media prowess, and with good reason. They have devoted time and resources to social media, including carving out space in the Emergency Operations Center for a Digital Ops Center (complete with both hardware and software donated by Dell Computers) in order to monitor social media before, during and after disasters. Why have they committed such effort to social media? My guess is that they understand that it is almost impossible to engage with community members via social networks unless you understand the conversation, and in order to understand the conversation you have to be online, monitoring what is being said. They want to know: What are the concerns? What are people talking about where we might be able to offer assistance? What is needed from us?

If your organization is using social media to simply push out your message, and you are not trying to participate in the conversation, then you are missing opportunities. Opportunities to show you care, as well as to educate.

Related articles

• American Red Cross launches “Hurricane App” as T.S. Isaac approaches (fox6now.com)