signal - social media, considerations for public safety and emergency management

SOCIAL MEDIAConsiderations for public safety and emergency management

SoCial Media | ConSiderationS for PubliC Safety and eMergenCy ManageMent

Social media offers opportunities and challengesSocial networks have rapidly been embraced by

communities across the globe. Services such as

facebook, twitter, youtube and flickr are a core

part of millions of peoples’ lives, allowing them to

share their experiences, videos and images, and

provide commentary on the events around them.

Such services are also becoming critical vehicles for communication, creating both opportunities and challenges for public safety and emergency management.

due to its widespread use, social media provides instant access to real-time information. Such information can provide and/or enhance intelligence, helping to ensure public safety and improve emergency situational awareness. being able to monitor and utilise this information is becoming vitally important for decision makers as part of their common operating picture.

despite the increasing importance and relevance of this information, the sheer volume of users and messages can make monitoring and managing social media very time and resource intensive.

this paper looks at the growth of social media, its relationship with public safety and emergency management, and considerations for monitoring social media.

Social media’s continuing riseit’s almost impossible to recite accurate social media

statistics as they keep growing at phenomenal rates,

but reported in early august 2012

• 20% of all online time is spent on a social media network

• every minute over 500,000 tweets are sent

• 250 million photos are updated daily

• one out of every eight people in the world are on facebook

• every day 552 million people log into facebook

• 62 to 64% of all australasian internet users belong to a social media site.

Whether personal or civic, social media is now a part of society. for example, most mobile users tend to get their news by social media [1], and city, county, state and federal governments nationwide are increasingly embracing social media to disseminate information. [2]

the ever increasing uptake of social media can be demonstrated by its use at major events e.g. euro 2012 was the biggest twitter event (previously 2010 World Cup); at the 2012 london olympics american swimmer ryan lochte gained over 500,000 twitter followers in a week, and there were 9.5 million mentions of the olympics on twitter during the opening ceremony – more tweets than for the entire 2008 beijing olympics!

Social media is also heavily used around disasters e.g. one minute after the 2011 Virginia earthquake twitter was hit by 40,000 comments; twitter was a tool for good and bad around the 2011 london riots; there was near instant use of social media after the 2012 movie theatre massacre in aurora, Colorado; around Hurricane irene there were more than 3,000 tweets per minute and seven of its top ten trending topics were Hurricane related posts.

aiding the rise of social media is ubiquitous technology. Smartphones and tablet devices, in addition to conventional laptops and notebooks, allow people to communicate over cellular and wireless networks.

growing smartphone penetration, now around 50% in most countries, is enabling greater use of social media. by 2014 it is expected that mobile internet usage will surpass internet access from desktop computers. [3]

relevance of social media in public safety and emergency managementbefore, during and after disaster and crisis situations it

is critical to have the right information at the right time.

as a result informed decisions and appropriate action

can be taken.

the information in and around social media is too valuable to ignore. Posting of pictures and videos, and sharing of information provides situational awareness. as a result, social media can provide real time reporting to emergency managers and the emergency operations centre. [4]

Social media tools, if used properly, provide the opportunity to turn individuals whom the emergency response effort previously perceived as liabilities in response into critical assets – every citizen is a sensor. the ability to crowd-source and leverage both affected and unaffected persons as force multipliers in response—be it as information providers or aggregators—is what separates new media from old, and this is where the new value is created.

as social media has put the power in the hands of the public, with anytime, anywhere access, there is risk of unwanted behaviour and incorrect information. Such actions need to be corrected via active monitoring and myth busting, whether through social media alone or a variety of channels.

even when the electrical supply goes down, or there are other infrastructure problems, the decentralised nature of telecommunications allows communications to still occur. users of social media, private users or public safety and emergency management, can utilise the cellular and wireless networks to maintain contact.

Social media can be used proactively to inform users of impending events and reactively to monitor awareness and impacts. the public now expect to be informed, included and engaged with.

recent examples of recommendations made after disaster reviews:

“If you are not doing social media, do it now. If you wait until its needed, it will be too late”

“It provides access to immediate feedback and information from the public at scenes”

Queensland Police Service: disaster Management and Social Media – a case study

“Fire agencies should attach the same value to community education and warnings as they do to fire suppression operations.”

2009: Victorian bushfires royal Commission

“…agencies should actively pursue the use of social media for warnings…”

“…explore the opportunity for greater use of social media as a credible source of information to and from the public”

2010/2011: Victorian flood Warnings and response review


Benefits of social media

Social media can assist public safety and emergency management as it is:

• Information rich. on its own, a tweet or a photo may have limited value. However, when hundreds or thousands of tweets or communications are looked at, patterns of behaviour. in addition to the raw content of these interactions, additional information – such as the location from which the post was made – is also captured, creating richer information.

• Timely. Services such as twitter allow people to communicate information, and receive it, in real-time. never before has there been a service which allows such widespread and timely information.

• One-to-one or one-to-many. Social media users can have direct conversations or they can ‘broadcast’ to their followers and fans. additionally social media can be used as an official message amplifier.

• Able to be monitored. While many people don’t always realise it, this information is typically published on public networks and can be accessed, read by anyone and acted upon.

• Able to be shared. information of note can be shared among public safety and emergency management staff for consideration and action.

• Able to be archived. robust archiving is critical to assist investigations, reviews and audits.

• Familiar. it is the medium in which many sections of society communicate everyday with their friends and family, and may therefore be the platform they will go to first in an emergency.

Emergency Management Phases

emergency management activations can be grouped into three core phases that are related by time/function to disasters and emergencies. Social media can be invaluable in all three phases.

1. Plan. the ability to listen, monitor, analyse, document and archive information pertaining to a disaster or emergency and plan for the potential consequences or impacts on life, and the protection of property. this includes assessing hazards, risks, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery needs. as part of the plan phase emergency management will:

• Monitor. in the monitoring stage, emergency managers watch and listen to messages streaming

through social media to better understand the medium and the message.

Monitoring focuses on one-way communication from the public. this mode informs and instructs the emergency Manager before any action is taken to deploy or use social media tactically or strategically.

this approach allows emergency managers to focus on the means by which the public gathers, shares and responds to information about emergencies. it does not necessarily involve the delivery of a service to secure a particular outcome. nevertheless, effective social media monitoring can inform response decisions and influence plans for its strategic use.

• Mitigate. activities that actually eliminate or reduce the probability of a disaster (example, identify “this river looks like it could flood”, and create resilience planning as part of this identified risk).

• Prepare. in the preparedness phase, emergency management and public safety, governments, multi agencies, and emergency management practitioners develop plans to save lives and minimise damage (for example, preparing new Zealand for nZ Shakeout; monitor the reach of the message, and crystallise official responses to the audiences tone, and sentiment.) Preparedness measures also strive to enhance disaster response operations (for example, by identifying the mobilization of spontaneous volunteering efforts).

2. Respond. immediately following a disaster or emergency the response phase is designed to provide emergency assistance for victims (example, monitoring search and rescue efforts, identify emergency shelter, medical care, and provision of food and water). during a response phase it is also vital to reduce the probability of secondary damage (example, identify behavioural trends and areas prone to looting and public order situations) and to expedite recovery operations (for example, identify damage and archive real time image and video for assessment).

3. Recover. activities necessary to return to business as usual including: monitoring what do people have, what do people need? (example, identifying: clean-up operations, offers of temporary housing, and access to food and water).

Social media when considered across day to day and incident management can be utilised in a myriad of ways:

Public Safety Emergency Management Business Continuity Management

Day to Day/ BAU

•respond to criminal activity

• identify locations of criminal activity

•anticipate criminal activity

•gather photographic or documentary evidence

•understand/prove criminal networks

• identify persons of interest

•build criminal profile – hobbies, travel dates, places visited

• locate missing persons

• Solicit/provide channel for information on criminal activity

• Support other media initiatives – Police documentaries, ‘Crimestoppers’

•act upon information – search warrants etc

• identify and correct misinformation

• Support resourcing decisions

•Collect community engagement – inform, question, what did the Police do well, and what did not go so well, recruit – take pulse

• identify influencers using social media who actively support and rt Police news

• increase online credibility.

• identify and correct misinformation

•Monitor building of preparedness among the community

•Horizon scan for reported events and hazards

• improve community relationships

•Monitor online discussion related to historical emergency event, exercise or organisation

• increase online credibility.

•Horizon scan within the Pr team and where required, flag or escalate issues to the relevant risk department.

• facilitate awareness across the organisation (particularly for the human resources, public relations and risk management teams)

•Help review performance following an incident

•Monitor risks to infrastructure, business processes and personnel.

Public Safety and Emergency Management Business Continuity Management

Incident/Event

•rapidly identify nature, location of event from community reports

• identify people and/or communities in need

• increase understanding of impact of response

• identify gaps in response

• integrate information into eoC to improve response

• identify improvements to the response

• identify and correct misinformation – myth busting

• improve situational awareness

•understand how opinion of your organisation is forming

•answer queries raised on social media sites

• increase the amount and speed of information gathered during the response phase

• increase the speed at which the community is informed

• improve monitoring of public needs

• improve situational awareness for personnel on the ground in crisis zones who may have no other communication available

•gather information during the recovery phase.

• enable Hr teams to provide a better level of care to employees in the midst of an incident

•understand where, and in what state of health, are your stakeholders

•respond quickly to change employee awareness/opinion

• enable communications monitoring of team members who are geographically dispersed

•recognise and react event impacts on partners, supply chains, clients and community

•use information to set up a temporary remote workforce

•Monitor the changing sentiment of users commenting online about an incident to help inform crisis communication decision making.


Managing social media in public safety and emergency managementa simple plan for the use of social media along

with constant use will make its integration into

the public information area and the emergency

operations centre seamless.

guidance regarding use of social media in public safety and emergency management can be found in many places including ‘Social media in an emergency: a best practice guide.’ from Wellington region CdeM group Plan. [5]

regardless of the degree of involvement with social media there can be significant benefit from just monitoring information.

emergency personnel can manually filter and research each individual source of social media information. However, this process is labour intensive and delays the ability to make fast, efficient, accurate decisions when time is a critical factor for operational effectiveness. this costs an organisation time, money, and in a worst case scenario, lives.

Without the right tool, monitoring social media can be:

• Complex. While most services will provide ways to locate and search for information, they all approach this task in a different way. this can create challenges around their use, and integration with emergency management information systems.

• Time consuming. due to the high volume of information being created, and the spikes of activity driven by large events (whether planned or unplanned), it can be time consuming finding, reviewing and acting on social media.

• Imprecise. Monitoring any service manually can be a challenge and, due to the complexity and the volume of information, can result in incomplete sets of information being captured, leading to key information or evidence being lost – or, rather, not even being found; this problem is compounded when multiple services are involved.

• Ill-suited. Public safety and emergency management organisations have very specific use, security, storage and audit requirements.

Social media monitoring requirements

any organisation wanting to use a social media monitoring tool for the purposes of public safety and emergency management needs to carefully consider its requirements. the following should be regarded as fundamental for any solution in this area:

• Track geolocation. understanding location of message can add invaluable intelligence.

• Mapping. Visual reference of activity can add perspective to the common operating picture.

• Real-time monitoring. time is often a critical element.

• Multi-user support. limitations on user numbers can cost lives.

• Universal search. Searching across multiple keywords can increase intelligence.

• Data archiving. referencing back to searches can be vital for evidence, investigations and reviews.

• Deployment models. Situation dependent deployment on premise or via hosted application.

• Proven experience. Choosing a social monitoring tool that has been proven in public safety and emergency management reduces risk for everyone.

Conclusion

Social media’s significant usage and ongoing growth creates opportunity for public safety and emergency management. information in and around social media can greatly enhance intelligence and the common operating picture.

the now commonplace use of social media should encourage public safety and emergency management agencies to get involved. the level of involvement can be staged with monitoring usually being the best place to start.

Many social media monitoring tools have been created to help organisations manage the deluge of information and gain intelligence. However, not all tools are alike especially when it comes to features specific to public safety and emergency management. organisations should consider their requirements carefully when investing in social media monitoring.

bibliography1. http://digitaljournal.com/article/317697

2. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-04/government-and-social-media/56759978/1

3. http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/2011-mobile-statistics-stats-facts-marketing-infographic/

4. Social Media and Virtual Platforms White Paper Centre for emergency Preparedness and disaster response yale new Haven Health

5. Social media in an emergency: a best practice guide. Wellington region CdeM group Plan

www.intergen.co.nz/signal

© Copyright 2012 intergen limited. all rights reserved. this document is for informational purposes only. no warranties, express or implied, are made in this document. information may change without notice. the names of companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

signal - social media, considerations for public safety and emergency management

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