Social Networks and Collaborative Resilience

Post by: Kim Stephens

Gloria Mark and Bryan Semaan in their 2008 study “Resilience in Collaboration: Technology as a Resource for New Patterns of Action”  found that in communities that have been disrupted (they focused on war zones) “technology played a major role in providing people with alternate resources to reconstruct, modify, and develop new routines, or patterns of action for work and socializing.”  Prophetically, they stated in their conclusion that they envision a system where people could simply give status updates regarding their well-being after a crisis.  Furthermore, they predicted crisismapping: “our data also point to the potential of utilizing collective intelligence in providing online information about the disrupted area. For example, people could collectively update a satellite map online with up-to-the minute information on local disruptions in their area.”

As Mark and Semaan indicated, resilience is defined as the ability to cope with an unexpected situation and “bounce back.” But… “new ways of using resources to be resilient [has] led to the emergence of new structures with consequences for work and social lives.” They provide several examples, for instance, in Iraq a University student video taped classes for friends who could not travel to campus after curfew: that practice became adopted and formalized by the institution.

Fast forward four years and we clearly see the  major role technology plays in fostering collective resilience. These “new structures” regarding how people communicate and collaborate have penetrated society–war zone or not. After a disaster,  information communication technologies that require very little, if any, actual technical skill have leveled the playing field regarding who can provide “information aid,” and have also allowed people to organize themselves in ways previously unimagined.  I’m not quite sure we in the emergency management community have fully grasped this impact nor have we adapted or adjusted our systems to take this into account .

For me, FEMA‘s use of the tool “Aid Matrix” provides an example of the disconnect.   AidMatrix is designed to match volunteers and donations with organizations who distribute those items. This software solution seems to be designed for mostly large corporate contributions, although citizens can contribute monetary donations to the list of “leading organizations in humanitarian relief”.  Regarding non-monetary donations, they state:

Please keep in mind that leading relief organizations typically seek sizable, bulk donations only when they meet the service delivery needs of a particular relief operation.

AidMatrix also allows for volunteers to match their skills  to organizations working in the impacted area… in theory. The portal, however, isn’t spun up for every event and I have heard complaints that even when it is used, it isn’t stood up quickly enough. People state that they find out about the tool around the time the event is over, see pic of the tweets from two people from the #SMEM (social media and emergency management) twitter community. Other concerns focus on the low rate of adoption and use. To my knowledge the portal is rarely, if ever used during events that do not meet the threshold for a disaster declaration.

 The recent April 16th tornado in Oklahoma also provides an illustration: searching the portal by state, the potential donor or volunteer receives the following message: “The Volunteer Portal is not currently active for Oklahoma“.  In contrast, the  Woodward Tornado Info (WTI) Facebook page most certainly is active, with over 2000 fans. The page is administered by Amber Wolanski, who also stood up the Joplin Tornado Information page. WTI was ready to go within hours of the event, no MOU or paperwork required. The community has utilized the collaborative space to post about needs of those impacted and even to broadcast information about a missing teen (unrelated to the tornado).

This type of Facebook page should no longer be news: this is the new normal. When there is a crisis people will stand up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to help match those with the desire to help with those in need. In the words of the scholars mentioned above, people are adapting existing technology to meet the pressing needs of the event.  Those of us in emergency management should embrace this newfound resilience, but how?  There are admitted limitations to matching needs to resources through a Facebook page. As a follow-up post I’m going to discuss one community-based, bottom-up donations management solution that was also born out of a tornado event. Stay tuned.

December List: Rebuild Joplin

Post by: Kim Stephens

Anyone who follows me will not be surprised by my choice of Rebuild Joplin for one of the top SMEM examples of 2011.

The story: After the EF-5 tornado ripped through  Joplin, Missouri  affecting thousands and killing 162 persons, community leaders not only had to deal with the crisis at hand, but also a veritable tsunami of donations and volunteers. Matching needs to these resources,  however, can be an overwhelming task unless there is a system in place. Joplin  did have a system via an existing program in the school system called Bright Future.

As I wrote in this post, Bright Futures’ pre-crisis mission was simply to connect the needs of impoverished students with resources in the community with the overarching goal of increasing graduation rates.  Social media facilitated this transaction by communicating needs and allowing for a conversation to take place with community members wishing to help.  Organizers found that they could find the resource for a child, such as a pair of shoes, within a matter of minutes after posting. The social platform also allowed for both thanking the donor and to stopping further donations or offers by making it known that the need had been met.

Post-crisis,  Rebuild Joplin was launched to do this same type of service community-wide.

What they did right:

1. Used an existing framework both community leaders and citizens were familiar with.
2. Verified organizations accepting monetary donations before  they were authorized to be listed on the site. This fact was (and still is) prominently posted.
3. Provided multiple ways for people to find the information, including tying  the website to their social media presence and embedding their Facebook feed via a widget on the site’s homepage.
4. Designed a process that allows for a multitude of organizations to register themselves on the site.
5.  Sorted registered organizations into a beautifully designed intuitive, and tabbed interface that allowed donors to quickly find who is accepting what they wish to contribute.  See example above.

I don’t think it can be said that every single item or in-kind donation was processed through this site during this event, (which is in the long-term recovery phase at time of writing) nor was their social media presence the only one facilitating donations (many sprung up organically). I would also like to see a way to  pull in more information via twitter feeds, however, as a model for donations management, this is a darn good start.

As a side note, the community has also come up with a way to thank each and every volunteer via the oldest media: handwritten notes. Of course they have a YouTube video describing the effort!

Related articles

• Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options and Policy Considerations (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Using Social Media to Aid Recovery (idisaster.wordpress.com)