Crowdmap and Crowd Sourcing in a Disaster

Crowdmap is a free program that allows you to begin to use the social media in your community. It is brought to you by the people who originally saw the use of social media with their Ushahidi program used extensively in Haiti right after the quake to identify where the worst damage and injured were located. Initially they used a physical map and pins now they have developed a program that automatically locates the origin of the call.

Crowdmap uses a map and immediately to mark where a call originated . You are able to begin to rapidly visualize where damage and clusters of people with injuries are located in your community. This information will allow you to use your resources more efficiently. This crowd sourcing of information is a powerful new tool to more rapidly size up a community after a disaster. It not only gives you dynamic map but it will track by time the reports and allows your to analyze the data as it is accumulated.

Crowd sourcing is a power new tool that takes advantage of the use of social media by your community's population. It is a powerful tool that should become standard operating procedure for any Office of Emergency Management.

Hurricane Irene the Press and Social Media

I watched a discussion on MSNBC last night where three talking head debated the response to Hurricane Irene. Was it too aggressive? Was it really necessary? This was a political discussion show. They were people who made their living talking about politics. Yet they felt perfectly comfortable talking about the response in political terms. None of the participants were response experts. They did not discuss the repeated warnings by the National Weather Service and their own weather people that a catastrophic flood was likely a day or two after the storm. The focused on New York City and the "inconvenience" they and the other New Yorkers felt.

None of this is surprising. What was surprising was the hosts comments at the end. He said that it was up to the media to keep the elected officials informed so they could make the right decisions. It was as if the whole emergency management apparatus and National Weather Service did not exist. He drew a picture of the elected officials hanging on every word from the various TV weathermen and women for the information to make their decisions.

The political aspects of a disaster and the media's over emphasis of it's own importance is about to change if the emergency management community will take advantage of it. That tool is social media in all it forms from Facebook to Twitter. Emergency management now has a way to directly communicate with the public. The local elected officials and emergency managers no longer have to depend entirely on the media to get the word out. Local officials can be on top of and even ahead of the media in informing the public of needed information. Yet these new tools are going to take a paradigm shift in thinking for emergency managers and elected officials.

The ability to communicate directly with the public during disasters is a powerful and sophisticated tool. Who will be responsible for it's use? Who will decide what and when information is posted? Who will manage the technology necessary? Is the PIO the best person or should there be a others involved? Will the PIO need a bigger staff? These are just a few of the questions that will have to be answered if emergency management is to take full advantage of social media phenomenon. There has much discussion in blogs and professional sites but I think it is time we began to answer not if we are going to use it but the nuts and bolts of how. 

Social Media and Disasters

Seventy-two percent of Americans belong to some sort of social network. These numbers must drive emergency management organizations at every level to develop plans and to become involved in social networking sites and services. Craig Fugate the head of FEMA said recently that he was able to determine the severity of the Jopin Tornado because of pictures he received over Twitter of the hospital and the surrounding neighborhood. Yet there are some caveats to that statistic.


In a recent Sachs/Mason-Dixon Poll 45% of those questioned stated that they would use social media for both gathering and sharing critical information during and after a natural disaster. Those 18 to 34 were much more likely to use social networks during a disaster with 63% stating they would use them during a disaster. While these numbers are impressive more than 50% of those responding to the poll stated they would continue to rely on home and cell phones. And less than 50% of those over 60 are members of social networks.

So these numbers point to more involvement for emergency management in social media it also points to a more sophisticated public information and communication plan for a jurisdiction. There must be a mix of the use of social media and of  the local news media to get any word out to the public. By using both social media and the local news outlets the likelihood of the word reaching all of the needed audience is dramatically increased. So any communication plan must address both social networking and news outlets.

The other side of the social networking coin though is the anecdote is used at the beginning of the blog. Properly used the public is a invaluable source of information in the first hours and days of a response. If the systems are in place to track the calls for assistance and to evaluate the photos coming from the public can be a huge help in the initial assessment and response. This type of capability requires planning, organization and a social media presence in the community.

So while you many not be able to depend on social media alone to keep your citizens informed is it a critical part of any communications plan for a disaster. More importantly it is turning into an invaluable resource of information for your response. If the head of FEMA can gain situational awareness from social media then the local emergency management can certainly use it as a part of his or her disaster response plan.