Emergencity :: admin: May 2008

John Solomon yesterday joined Jonah Czerwinski of Homeland Security Watch and Rich Cooper of Security Debrief in a Blogger Roundtable on Hurricane Preparedness with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Paulison.

Post-Katrina, DHS and FEMA appear to be vastly more prepared and well-positioned to take on large-scale disasters, from decentralized regional teams to partnerships that shine visibility and clarity on available resources.  My take is that last mile sustained communications has not been thoroughly addressed at the DHS and FEMA level.  Secretary Chertoff had some very positive things to say about a notification technology called IPAWS:

This goes beyond the typical radio and TV-based alert system to one that allows Internet-based warning and cell phone-based, text message based, warning with an opt-in feature. We piloted this system last year in the Gulf. It worked very well. It is not terribly expensive. We are going to be encouraging the governors of the states in the hurricane areas to sign up for this system. I think it's only a few million dollars, and there's even some of our grant money. If they want to use some of that, they can do it. But we're providing them with a tool that will enhance their ability to reach out to the members of their community - particularly people who may be hearing-impaired - and give them notice if there's any kind of an event. And they need to step up to the plate and accept this invitation; and we're going to be encouraging them to do that.)

But taking a large forest fire or a pandemic as an example, residents may be at the computers scouring the web for any information they can find on the incident.  They'll reload and reload the browser, hoping that every couple minutes there is new information that allows them to feel more comfortable about the situation, and allows them to make better decisions about their family, home, pets and businesses.  That information might be official from an Office of Emergency Services, from a local media outlet or, yes, bloggers aggregating information for their communities.

Secretary Chertoff later offers the following:

You know, 21st century networking is about the power of the network. How do you harness text messaging, cell phones, internet? We've done some things with Ready to try to do that, but maybe - I wish some of the guys in Hollywood who are focused on some of these other things would actually pay a little bit of attention to this. We could maybe get a real boost.

Emergencity is well-positioned to answer this question, just a scant 90 miles north of "the guys in Hollywood."  As they say in Hollywood, have your people call our people and let's do lunch.

The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction created an online game called Stop Disasters, which quite brilliantly walks players through a twenty minute scenario, where they have a budget and goals, with the intent to save lives, protect structures and preserve the local economy.  Available in five languages, the game provides a fun learning experience that is sure to resonate with students and adults alike.  Impressive effort.

Blogger and citizen journalist John Solomon has a relatively new, very informative blog, In Case of Emergency, Read Blog and today did an online chat with Washington Post readers, titled Outlook: Preparing a Disaster.  Great reading, all the way around.

I'm very pleased to be working closely with Bert Mahoney, President / Creative Director of HamiltonBerchman Design Group, Inc. and Director of Internet Strategy and Services AIGA Santa Barbara.  Bert is taking on a set of design and information architecture responsibilities for our community communications platform.   It's going to look great and be organized in such a way as to provide tremendous value to communities during calm times and crises.

Twitter is a "microblog" technology, with its own unique and developing syntax, where users can post updates in 140 characters or less, and have a running feed of everyone they want to keep an eye on.  We are seeing some interesting implementations of Twitter as it relates to emergency management and response.   Just a couple of many examples:

Red Cross Uses Social Media Tools to Spread the Word, Deliver Aid and Raise Money for California Fires - Kami Huyse, Communication Overtones

The Red Cross has set up a Twitter channel to send out minute-to-minute updates on this and other disasters, including statistics and directions. If you are unable to get Internet access, the Red Cross has a Safe and Well Twitter account set up to help people check into the Safe and Well Website with a cell phone. If you have set up a Twitter account, follow these directions, text 40404 and in the body add D safeandwell FIRSTNAME LASTNAME #### STREET CITY STATE ZIP CELLPHONE' and a brief note about how you are.

Hashtags are a Twitter-specific, and relatively primitive, way to tag concepts of interest, like #obama or #sandiegofires.  It is an incompletely integrated convention that is still getting, well, hashed out...

Hashtags become even more useful in a time of crisis or emergency as groups can rally around a common term to facilitate tracking, as demonstrated today with the San Diego fires (in fact, it was similar situations around Bay Area earthquakes that lead me to propose hashtags in the first place, as I’d seen people Twittering about earthquakes and felt that we needed a better way to coordinate via Twitter). - FactoryJoe

There is some very interesting research being done by UCSD and others, where 9-1-1 calls are being analyzed temporally and spatially to determine where there may be a larger incident threatening a community, combined with automatic targeted notification of residents and business that may be affected. (h/t Markus Sandy)

By combining the [9-1-1] call data with topographic images from Google Earth, researchers conducted a spatiotemporal analysis - relating both space and time together - of typical call activity in order to set parameters that would automatically alert viewers of abnormally high call rates. These 'hotspots', or clusters of activity within certain areas and within predetermined lengths of time, were then directly correlated to specific events in those areas such as an earthquake, explosion or fire.