Twitter + ants = Disaster Response 2.0

Foreign Service InstituteApril 16, 2010

W. David StephensonStephenson Strategies

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Transformed our lives

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During the past decade, more and more powerful mobile personal communication devices plus clever applications and entrepreneurial services to capitalize on those devices, have transformed our lives. Increasingly, especially with Web 2.0 social media applications, those devices are also networked -- they can communicate directly with each other. That upsets the old top-down, hierarchical communications structure where everything went through a centralized system. The more we use these devices and applications, the more we’re in charge, providing shared content and assisting each other instead of relying on intermediaries. We advise each other about all sorts of things using Twitter. We revive old friendships on Facebook. We post photos of our vacations on Flickr, and our videos on YouTube, and communities of interest organize and share information using Ning.

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… and, in natural disasters or terrorist attacks, guess what? We no longer tune to dedicated emergency information sources such as the Emergency Alert System, we do what we do every other day: we turn to these same social networks. Not only do we do this because they are familiar, but also because emergency after emergency has taught us that real-time social network communications are likely to get us information much more rapidly than we’ll receive it from conventional sources. That fact was driven home to me last summer when I addressed top homeland security and emergency officials from around the country at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security in Monterey. Most of these people were just beginning to hear about social media – let alone use them. The District of Columbia’s Deputy Fire Chief – as wired in to emergency communications networks as you could be – blew the other participants away when he said that he first heard about the shootings at the Holocaust Museum from his daughter, who had received a Tweet about them.

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And, if there were any lingering doubts about who we turn to for breaking news on disasters, they were removed in January, when the public, media and relief agencies alike found that tweets from Haiti, especially since traditional media were disrupted, were the best source of news. That is not to say that the tweets were always accurate: the were some that provided erroneous information about free plane flights to Haiti for relief workers or free shipping of some relief supplies. However, those errors were quickly quickly corrected and the social media, consistent with their raison d’etre in normal times – to help friends share location-based information in real-time -provided important real-time situational awareness.

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… and, in perhaps the most dramatic example of all, one Haiti victim used a first aid application on his iPhone to treat serious injuries he’d suffered, it’s flashlight app to find a safe waiting place, and its GPS to tell rescuers where to search for him!

Get over it!

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I conclude that it is now inevitable: the trend toward people using social media and mobile devices to share information and coordinate their responses will only continue and strengthen over time. The information flow in disasters is now officially out of control. As security professionals, I’m sure that scares the daylights out of you. How will you be able to control the flow of information and make certain that it is only from authoritative sources? The answer is that you can’t. The sooner you come to terms with that reality and figure out how to gain from it, the better off we’ll all be.

Emergent behavior7

! Years of research at the two primary disaster research centers, the Universities of Delaware and Colorado, have demonstrated that what is needed in emergencies is the kind of “emergent behavior” that this termite colony, and ant hills or bee hives demonstrate. A large number of individuals, acting largely on their own and self-directed, cobble together highly sophisticated collaborative actions. Emergent behavior is a higher level of collective behavior -- and combined intelligence -- that couldn’t be predicted from the behavior of individuals. The group becomes a highly capable “superorganism.” As the Delaware researchers report, “Studies of evacuation at times of crises have now been undertaken for the last 50 years. They have consistently shown that at times of great crises, much of the organized behavior is emergent rather than traditional. In addition, it is of a very decentralized nature, with the dominance of pluralistic decision making, and the appearance of imaginative and innovative new attempts to cope with the contingencies that typically appear in major disasters.”

Disaster management demands emergent behavior

•Can’t be managed by adding more...•Doesn’t respect titles or boundaries•Plans help, but disasters won’t play by them•Unpredictable, rapidly changing•New players, new roles

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The extreme nature of disasters or terrorist attacks force even the most traditional organizations to abandon traditional command and control approaches and explore innovative problem solving, no matter how many sophisticated planning exercises have been held. As Dr. Erik Auf der Heide wrote:

“... Disasters are different from routine, daily emergencies. The difference is more than just one of magnitude. Disasters generally cannot be adequately managed merely by mobilizing more personnel and material. Disasters may cross jurisdictional boundaries, create the need to undertake unfamiliar tasks, change the structure of responding organizations, result in the creation of new organization, trigger the mobilization of participants that do not ordinarily respond to local emergency incidents, and disable the routine equipment and facilities for emergency response. As a consequence of these changes, the normal procedures for coordinating community emergency response may not be adapted well to the situation.”

And, as another disaster researcher, Kathleen Tierney, wrote:

“...It has long been recognized that disasters represent occasions in which the boundaries between organizational and collective behavior are blurred. As disasters become larger and more complex, routinized organizational roles and even disaster plans give way to improvisation, as it becomes increasingly evident that those earlier expectations and guidelines no longer apply.”

Innovative attempts to cope

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Let’s consider several recent examples of emergent behavior in disasters.

Obscured somewhat by the massive efforts focused on Ground Zero on 9/11 was what happened that day in Lower Manhattan, in an evacuation that has been compared to the British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II. The Delaware researchers studied this event in a provocatively-titled report “Who Was in Charge of the Massive Evacuation of Lower Manhattan by Water Transport on September 11? No One Was, Yet It Was an Extremely Successful Operation. Implications?” It was a huge success: between 300,000 and half a million people were evacuated in about 6-7 hours, with no fatalities or casualties and no accidents.

More significant for purposes of our discussion, as the article’s title stressed, no one was in charge. While the Coast Guard did put out a request for any available boat to go to the area after the second tower collapsed, the the Delaware researchers reported that most of the operation resulted from individual boat operators deciding completely on their own to do what they could. Not only was no one running the operation, there was no game plan, no forethought: what scenario planner could have possibly thought up such an horrific event? Instead, as the Disaster Research Center researchers wrote:

“Who went where, where evacuees were disembarked in New Jersey or Staten Island and how long any vessel operated, were very often decisions made independently by the multiple operators of different vessels who had little direct communication with one another or agencies elsewhere. The Coast Guard did suggest some tugs go to particular docks in lower Manhattan, but this was an atypical guidance effort in the situation, especially in the early stages. The larger number of vessels from the private sector operated intermixed with public organizations. This required informal cooperation to avoid collisions and taking turns in picking up evacuees, since no overall control of the water traffic could have been imposed. However, when the vessel traffic at certain

localities became very heavy, it was a port captain of a major private shipping company on his own initiative who informally took over as an unofficial waterfront coordinator in one part of the bay.”

Leverage social networks

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During Katrina, the spectacular failure of most agencies response (with the notable exception of the Coast Guard), obscured a another emergent behavior flotilla, the so-called Cajun Navy. This differed from the 9/11 evacuation in that it capitalized on existing social networks.

According to an account by journalist Jefferson Hennessey, several state senators and other civic leaders in the bayous south of New Orleans all had the same thought at approximately the same time: they must take their flat-bottom boats and go to New Orleans to help out. As State Sen. Nick Gautreaux of Abbeville said, “I have to do something to help those people. We can’t just stand around and watch those people on their rooftops,” The Cajun Navy differed in one important way from the Lower Manhattan flotilla: it was made up of people who already were linked in social networks. That paralleled a major flood in the 1980s in Salt Lake City where members of the Mormon Church were activated. They were effective because of their prior ties, but

worked and were involved in far different -- emergent -- ways during the recovery than in their normal roles. While the phones still worked in much of the bayou country, they didn’t in New Orleans, so another state senator, Walter Boassa, used his Blackberry to also turn out hundreds of volunteers. When they got to New Orleans, a by-the-book State officer told the volunteers they weren’t needed -- clearly erroneous given the way the official response had failed so miserably. The Cajun Navy volunteers simply moved on, found places where they could launch, and then spent 3 days rescuing survivors.

11!! Fast forward to January’s earthquake in Haiti, and the emergent behavior response kicked in, but with an important difference: a wide range of advanced mobile communication devices and social media now existed that willing volunteers could capitalize upon. Ironically, a group that I helped create last year, Crisis Camp, was holding its second Washington meeting the weekend of the earthquake. It’s purpose is specifically to used computer skills and social media to improve disaster response. For those who aren’t familiar with the “camp” concept, it might be called an un-conference: a small group calls the event, but the actual agenda is decided on the day of the event by those who actually show up. It would drive those of you who are used to carefully controlled, top-down managed events absolutely crazy. Rather than the abstract exercise organizers had planned, the Crisis Camp quickly focused on Haiti, and was complemented by a wide range of other spontaneous events around the US that brought people with social media and programming skills together for the common good. I will detail some of the specific initiatives that resulted later in my presentation.

Disaster Response 2.0: social media facilitate emergent behavior

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! We know from these and countless other ad hoc disaster responses, that the necessary emergent behavior will happen. It just does. However, what is particularly exciting about when social media and a wide range of mobile devices are brought into the mix is that, for the first time, we actually have communication tools that specifically foster emergent behavior. That is because, as with the Katrina evacuation and Salt Lake City sandbagging examples, when a disaster strikes the people already have social relationships, as opposed to having to create them on the fly under the most stressful situations possible. The difference when you bring in social media is that the social networks aren’t limited to your immediate family and friends -- they may well be worldwide and involve people you've never actually met but have developed close friendships -- and trust -- with. If complete strangers can create as dramatic results as those who evacuated so many from Lower Manhattan did, it seems logical that those who are already comfortable interacting may be able to dispense with the introductions, jump right into the task at hand, and do even more collaboratively. Equally important, because mobile social networks are egalitarian and self-initiated, members are already comfortable taking the initiative, and won’t have to wait for instructions from a leader. I believe the social network members who became involved in Crisis Camp Haiti are the pioneers of what we might call Disaster Response 2.0. As with other phenomena given the 2.0 tag, what they have in common is operating in Web-centric organizations that inherently foster collaboration.

The Mix: CAP Content

alert xmlns='http://www.incident.com/cap/1.0'> <identifier>KSTO1055887203</identifier> <sender>KSTO@NWS.NOAA.GOV</sender> <sent>2003-06-17T14:57:00-07:00</sent> <status>Actual</status> <msgType>Alert</msgType> <scope>Public</scope> <info> <category>Met</category> <event>SEVERE THUNDERSTORM</event> <urgency>Severe</urgency> <certainty>Likely</certainty> <senderName>NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SACRAMENTO</senderName> <headline>SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING</headline> <description>SEVERE THUNDERSTORM OVER SOUTH CENTRAL ALPINE COUNTY</description> <instruction>TAKE COVER IN A SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER UNTIL THE STORM PASSES</instruction> <contact>BARUFFALDI/JUSKIE</contact> <area> <areaDesc>EXTREME NORTH CENTRAL TUOLUMNE COUNTY IN CALIFORNIA, </areaDesc> <polygon>38.47,-120.14 38.34,-119.95 38.52,-119.74 38.62,-119.89 38.47,-120.14</polygon>

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So how will Disaster Response 2.0 work? I can’t really tell you, in advance. Each response will have its own characteristics, driven by the characteristics of the event itself. It’s like my friend John Arquilla says about how we must respond to networked enemies such as Al Quaeda: a networked enemy demands a networked response. The exact tools to be used can’t even be predicted in advance. We won’t know in advance how much infrastructure has been damaged, and what resources are already on the ground in a given disaster or terrorist attack scene. That is why I refer to the potential ingredients in a networked Disaster 2.0 response as the “mix.” --- it’s not a recipe, but there is a range of devices and social media applications that you can mix or match on the spot as the situation demands. To give you some insight into the possibilities, let me give you an overview of how various social media tools and mobile devices -- most of them developed for non-crisis use, can be adapted seamlessly for disaster response. The first does capitalize on information from conventional sources and was developed specifically for emergencies: the Common Alerting Protocol, or CAP. I will come back to CAP at the end of my presentation, because I believe it is an absolutely critical tool that hasn’t gotten sufficient attention to date. It is part of a much broader set of XML, a system of open-standard, globally-accepted “tags” that attach meta-data, or “information about information," to data. Once data has been tagged, that metadata remains permanently attached to it, and the relevant data can be made automatically available and on a real-time basis, to anyone or any device needing it, without them having to search for it. Any of the programs or devices that I will mention can access that data, making it the most important part of any emergency information system.

The Mix: real-time, location-based video

The Mix: wikis

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The second most critical social media tool for Disaster Response 2.0 is a wiki. This one is from Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, a global

disaster response group that emphasizes crowdsourcing, or enabling ordinary individuals to contribute their insights and concerns about a disaster, and do so on a real-time basis. The open-source Ushahidi tool lets any person or organization set up their own way to collect and visualize information. It allows plug-ins and extensions so that it can be customized for different locales and needs. Andy Carvin’s Hurricane Information Network also uses wikis to to capture instant "lessons learned" during a disaster so those dealing with a new hurricane won’t have to reinvent the wheel -- they can instantly access that past information. It also creates a one-stop source to organize and distribute new crowd-sourced information about the hurricane response as it unfolds.

The Mix: Twitter

15 I was surprised to find recently that I was Twitter user #262, having signed up 4 days after it launched in 2006. Even though the content was pretty sketchy in those days, I realized early on that by allowing anyone to post real-time, location-based information, it could provide invaluable situational awareness in fast-changing crises. Doubtless, you have all heard about how Twitter is now automatically one of THE places to turn for any crisis -- most recently, the revolution in Kyrgyzstan last week. You may wonder how much substantive information can be conveyed in the 140 characters of a twitter message. Fortunately, a team of researchers headquartered @ the University of Colorado had been refinining what they call “Tweak the Tweet,” a program to systematize the twitter hashtags that could be used in a crisis, such as #road #loc and #name, so that the hashtags become machine-readable, allowing very rapid sharing, and, most important, machine-readable, data. As Tweak the Tweet becomes a commonly-accepted global standard -- think of it as CAP for the rest of us -- data the public contributes using these tags will become increasingly accurate, valuable, and instantly accessible for everyone, the public and first responders alike. I view Tweak the Tweet as the first of many collaborative efforts to make crowdsourcing in emergencies more accurate and more valuable.

The Mix: Twitter photos and videos

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People have said for centuries, that a Twitpic is worth 1,000 Tweets. That was certainly true during the Haiti quake. A photo, and even more so a more so a a video shot with a cameraphone, can provide a wealth of detail about the extent of damage or location of gunmen, for example. It becomes even more valuable because these photos or videos are geo-tagged, so authorities will know the exact location. I have argued for the past four years that authorities must provide guidance for the public on what kind of visual information (landmarks? license plates? victims’ injuries? ) should be involved in these photos and videos to make them more valuable as sources of situational awareness -- similar to what has been done for Tweets with the Tweak the Tweet program. Yet, to my knowledge, NO governmental agency has done that. Let me be a little more blunt today: given the public’s proven willingness to provide these photos and videos -- even at considerable personal risk -- plus the invaluable information they can provide, I think it is reprehensible that no agency has taken me up on this challenge. If you are in a position to do so, bring me in as a consultant immediately to fill this gap. It is that important!

The Mix: low-power mesh laptops

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If you haven’t seen one, this is one of the extremely cheap, extremely rugged laptops created by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program to bring the Web to improverished children around the globe. The exact same qualities that make OLPC invaluable for its primary task (simplicity, low-power requirements, instant

ability to create a mesh network simply by opening the machine, etc.) also make it invaluable for disaster communications. If you are operating in a nation where OLPC operates, consider participating in its program that allows you to make a charitable donation that purchases one OLPC for a school, and one for your use. Then you’ll be able to use it in a disaster.

The Mix: ad-hoc mesh network

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CUWin is a non-profit in Champaign-Urbana that tries to bring ubiquitous wi-fi access to communities at low or no cost. They have created downloadable software that you can burn to a CD-ROM and then insert in a disaster when normal internet access is lost that would allow any laptops and/or desktop computers in a given geographic area to form an ad-hoc network.

The Mix: low-tech ad hoc network

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But what if the disaster is really cataclysmic and all conventional communications are lost? The Mix also includes the ultimate fall-back system: an ad hoc network of cheap (under $25) short-range FRS walkie talkies. The model is DCERN, the DC Emergency Radio Network, created not by a first responder, but DC literary agent Bill Adler. He reasoned that if everyone tuned to the same channel on these walkie-talkies, they’d be able to fan out over a neighborhood and in a disaster, relay messages from one to another. To my knowledge, DCERN has never received any funding: it is totally volunteer, and now covers the entire District plus some Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Just make certain you’ve got lotsa batteries on hand.

The Mix: push info to the edge

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! I’d like to conclude this review of some -- but by no means all -- of the grwoing array of mobile devices and social media applications that can empower the public in a Disaster Response 2.0 network by mentioning one that’s of particular interest to me. It’s a suite of programs for the early smartphones that I created immediately before the Iraq War that distilled all of the best information I could find anywhere in the world on preparation for or response to a disaster or terrorist attack. I did it on the theory that if all communication was disrupted, those who had the program would be able to fend for themselves (as happened with the fellow who used his iPhone to survive the Haiti earthquake), lessening the burden on first responders, so they could concentrate on those most in need of help. The programs got a great critical response, and sold modestly well (although I always thought they’d be best provided as free downloads from government agencies), but I had to scrap them because I couldn’t afford all of the constant research and manual scraping and pasting of data required to keep them current -- and nothing could be worse than obsolete disaster response information. I mention this because I’m completing a book, Data Dynamite: unleash information to transform everything. In the book, I argue that automatically attaching metadata to information the first time it is entered, plus automatically distributing that data to those who need it, preferably on a real-time basis, can literally transform everything we do. As I was writing the book, it finally dawned on me that if such a system was in place, and if the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and the State Department released the kind of data that we would need in a crisis tagged with metadata and automatically syndicated, it would be feasible to resurrect my program: every time you opened the program on an iPhone, for example, the new data would be automatically downloaded and obsolete information removed. I am convinced that if these agencies were to do that under the Open Government Directive, and corporations were to follow suit with tagged versions of their own disaster response procedures, it would be possible to have both generalized versions of the Terrorism Survival Planner as well as company- and agency-specific versions. Please feel free to talk to me after the program if you’d be interested in such a program.

Policy lags behind technology• “Playbook” of options

• Policies and procedures to govern & improve public participation

• Criteria to evaluate new devices and applications

• Research ways to increase likelihood of swarm intelligence in emergencies

• Public-private partnerships

• Attitude shift!

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! As I said at the beginning of my presentation, I believe that it is inevitable that the public will increase their use of social media and mobile devices in disasters and terrorist attacks in the future, and that this is not only to be accepted, but applauded as making true partnerships with the public -- Disaster Response 2.0-- possible. However, governmental and corporate policy lags behind the technology when it comes to such a paradigm shift. I will conclude by challenging you to address a variety of concerns necessary to make such a system possible:

• “Playbook” of options

• Policies and procedures to govern & improve public participation

• Criteria to evaluate new devices and applications

• Research ways to increase likelihood of swarm intelligence in emergencies

• Public-private partnerships

• Attitude shift!

Specific challenges to you!

• We’re grown-ups, can be full partners, but only if you’ll tell us what to do!

• Two-way street: if we’re giving you information, you’d better listen

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Finally, I challenge you to not simply allow such a Disaster 2.0 approach, but to actively foster it. Especially in areas such as use of cellphone photos and videos to provide situational awareness, we are grown-ups, capable of providing you with invaluable real-time, location-based situational awareness -- but only if you tell us what kind of information would be most helpful, and, as with the “Tweak the Tweet,” initiative, provide us with a simple, standardized format to organize this content. I’m shocked that so many government agencies and corporations don’t routinely monitor the social media in a disaster, preferring in most cases to simply use them as an alternative means to distribute top-down information. That is important, but is simply no substitute for a truly interactive approach that solicits this input and then carefully considers it. One precedent is the National Weather Service, which actively solicits public reporting of meteorological information (especially extremely dangerous, hyper-local phenomena such as microbursts). It is time for every agency and company dealing with similar real-time crises to launch similar outreach and public education programs.

for more information on “networked homeland security,” or to discuss customized handheld disaster data bases

contact:

W. David StephensonStephenson Strategies

335 Main StreetMedfield, MA 02052

508 740-8918

D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategies.comTwitter: Data4All

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