Web 2.0 Technology Building Situational Awareness:

Free and Open Source Tools of the Trade

Dr. Connie White

#EMAG2012

Presentation on Slidesharehttp://slideshare.com/conniewhite

Decision Support

A Holistic Approach to Evaluating Social Medias Successful Implementation into Emergency Management Operations Robby Westbrook, Tammy Karlgaard, Connie White and Josalyn Knapic

An emergency manager consistently struggles with real time incident assessment, particularly if the event is extensive and requires a multidisciplinary response.

The goal of real time situational information assessment is to create a Common Operating Picture across the entire area of impact. Westbrook, et al. 2012

April 27, 2011 Catoosa County

After the tornado, the survivors did send messages, but they went to relatives via social media because there was not an established method of communications with emergency managers.

Official Response Efforts 3 hours

A Faster Response Possible?

Online Interactive Mapping
Use the Public?

What if these survivors had an established communication method to send real time messages to emergency managers and first responders?

Local Emergency Management

UsingSocial MediaEngagingIData Points &Information

Not EngagingIIIAnother way to Broadcast Information

People

4 Situations to Consider

http://www.livestream.com/techstate/video?clipId=pla_a1cef922-7b17-400b-b67c-a21cb877b1f9

GoTo 52:40 - 58:40

How Accurate is the Data?

Collaboration

Who's using Social Media for Situational Awareness?Robby Westbrook, Cherokee County Georgia

What Free and Open Source Tools are Available?

FEMA Grant funding your Disaster Management Software?

Over Reliance on funding

Under Reliance: The Power of the People

Free vs
Free & Open Source Software

SM Free but not Open Source

Foursquare

Ushahidi

MappingWikiMapia

Open Street Maps

Google Maps

Google Earth

WebEOC $$$$$$

The Sahana Software Foundation is dedicated to the mission of saving lives by providing information management solutions that enable organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters.

Sahana Active Deployments

2005 - the Phillipines, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

2006 - Indonesia (2006)

2007 - Peru and Bangladesh

2008 - China, Myanmar and India

2009 - Indonesia and Sri Lanka

2010 - Venezuela, Mexico, Pakistan, Chile, and Haiti

2011 - Japan and Columbia

Now - NYC, LA, Chicago

Guest Speaker
Fran Boon

How?

Try the Demo:http://demo.eden.sahanafoundation.org

Download & install on your PC

Your Choice:Your own Technical Resources

Professional Support

Build SM Communities
Through Exercise

Small local scale, group of 5, Roles, Social Media university course, EM professionals, virtualHow to create online scenarios?

How to implement?

Who's responsible for what, when?

How to aggregate information?

Making Sense of the Info Flood
A Social Media Exercise System

17 Participants

Disaster Systems Course

To support about 90 minutes of play time, approximately 500 tweets were created, as well as four online news stories at both the local and national level, and dozens of 911 reports that would be fed to the exercise system. In addition the the pre-planned inject packages, controllers were able to create injects on the fly, working off on information overheard in the room.

http://dfmerrick.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/making-sense-of-the-info-flood-a-social-media-exercise-system/

As the exercise wore on, several things became clear to the controllers and participants:

One map isnt really sufficient. You need a map (such as Ushahidi) for initial assessment of incoming info; a sandbox, and a final map that contains only what has been assessed as valid. Two Ushahidi instances may be the way to go, we arent entirely certain yet.

Filtering capability of reports and tweets needs to include time range searches. For example, participants needed the ability to show all tweets received between 1800 and 1820, and that capability did not exist.

Simulating social media requires a lot of data to be created.

The simulation cell needs custom built tools to effectively manage the inject of information to the exercise.

While the type of information received never called for emergency managers to allocate resources, it was very helpful for gaining a complete understanding of the event.

News article comments are a valuable source of data, and key areas to monitor for rumor and incorrect information.

Publish
Lessons
Learned

Exercise X24
24-25 September 2010

Over 12,500 people from 79 nations and 90 U.S. government, non-government organizations, and public/private partners in a collaborative environment using crowdsourcing, social media, and cloud computing applications.

http://vizcenter.net/x24/more.html

Issues to Consider Global X24

Open Invitation to Formal and Informal Networks

Schedule of Events

Rules of Engagement

Notice and Consent

2nd Exercise X24 Europe
March 28-31, 2011

X24 Europe transcended all expectations in its ability to form a collaborative bridge between individuals, communities, and nations with over 49,000 participants from 92 nations that included two ambassadors, a US major general, as well as representatives from US European Command (EUCOM), US Northern Command, US Transportation Command, Office of Navy Research, STAR-TIDES at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy from National Defense University, and many others.

X24 Mxico

3rd iteration of a primarily virtual, open-invitation, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) exercise with real-world functional components....more to come.

Participants include DHS/Office of Health Affairs, NORAD-NORTHCOM, US Customs and Border Protection/Global Borders College, Mexican Army and Navy, Mexico Federal Police, Ministry of Defense from Vietnam, India National Disaster Management Agency, World Shipping Council, Red Cross, Pacific Disaster Center, NYK Logistics, National defense University, and growing.

Where does Georgia go from here?

Q & A

Click to edit the title text format

Emergency Management Association of Georgia